


Germination

by Jupiterstorm



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-06-28 07:13:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 135,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19807315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jupiterstorm/pseuds/Jupiterstorm
Summary: It is September of 1986.  El "Jane" Hopper is adjusting to her first experience in school, life with the Byers, and a new feeling of trying to be normal.  Mike Wheeler is still struggling without her and eager to muddle his way through his own challenging high school experience.  They long for each other even more when unusual events start happening.  El starts seeing visions of Hop, her adoptive father, over a year after his death.  Hawkins has another major blackout rooted in the same spot as their last in the summer of 1985.  Are all of these coincidences, or is something brewing in the Upside Down that can send the entire party straight into a whirlwind again?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! After seeing Season 3, I was greatly inspired to write a continuation. I don't imagine that this is how the real thing will actually go, but I figured it may be fun to play anyway! I hope you all enjoy it! Please leave feedback and let me know what works and what doesn't as I go; it's much appreciated!

_September 2, 1986_

_Dear El,_

_I miss you already and it’s only been three weeks since you visited! Not much has changed since you left. Max and Lucas are broken up for the eleventh time. Yes – lucky eleven. Lucas is pretty confident that she’ll take him back again, but she’s pretty mad. Something about him being too friendly to Sandy Berk in choir. She probably told you about it in her letter to you. I think it’ll be fine, though. They always get back together._

_I started school and sophomore year is rough. I have to take advanced English, trigonometry, physics, French, and European History. Trigonometry is a kind of math; it deals with a lot of complicated formulas and stuff like that. The teachers are all really strict and already gave me a ton of homework, but don’t worry! I’ll be busy but I’ll always find time to write to you. It’s almost good that I’m so busy because I have less free time sitting around and feeling sad that you’re not here, especially now that Mom asked me to get a job and earn some money if I’m going to keep taking the bus to Illinois to see you. I got a job at the video store. Robin and Steve gave me a good recommendation. It’s not bad; I even get to rent a few cool movies and see them for a discount, so that’s good! And having money is a plus. When I save up enough, I’ll buy you something nice!_

_On the down side, Dustin, Lucas and I are still being attacked by that guy Roger Fulton. Such a mouth breather. He thinks his shit smells like roses because he’s on the football team and has more muscles than Superman. Remember last year when I said he shoved me into his locker and locked me in? Ugh, I wish you were here and had your powers back and you could crush his brains or something. It’s not like I can tell on him or anything because he’ll just give it to me ten times worse. Anyway, this year he has to get a passing grade in Level 1 math or he’ll be kicked off the football team so he’s threatening me and Lucas into doing his homework for him on top of everything else I have to do._

_But never mind me; how are you? How is school? I mean, I know it just started and that it’s your first year, so it may be stressful and all. It is for me. You have Will there to help take care of you, so that’s good I guess, right? You guys can take care of each other. I know he’s had it just as bad as Lucas and I have. Something about all of us just screams “Crap here”. Maybe everyone is just secretly jealous because we’re a million times cooler than they are. Ha! I wish!_

_Although you are. Much cooler. I miss seeing you and hearing your voice. But at least I get to hear it once a week as usual. I insisted that I can’t work on Fridays because that’s OUR day. Don’t let any of those assholes that have been bothering Will get you down. You’re the most awesome person in the entire world._

_Write back soon, El. I miss you so much._

_Love,_

_Mike_

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Señora Hopper, what are you doing?” El very quickly hid Mike’s letter inside her Spanish textbook, discretely positioning it in a place where it couldn’t be found. Señora Fresca had already confiscated one of her precious letters from Mike in the two weeks since school started, and she couldn’t lose another one. 

“Vocabulary,” El lied, placing her pencil to her notebook and scribbling the first of the twenty Spanish words she was supposed to be documenting three times each. Señora Fresca came over, but with Mike’s letter firm between two pages of her textbook, she thankfully didn’t see it. She did, however, see that twenty minutes had passed and El had only gotten up to the first vocabulary word. “Casa – house. Cas…”

“Uno. You’re only up to numero uno? We have been working for twenty minutes, Señora Hopper,” Señora Fresca reminded her. “What on Earth have you been doing this entire time?” El’s attention was distracted by motion she caught on her right, where a girl named Lisa, who seemed to take sheer joy in making El’s life miserable, and her boyfriend Tony, were sniggering and making faces in her direction.

“You two are no better!” Señora Fresca said, storming over. “Cuddling and kissing like this is a telenovela set. This is a classroom!”

“This is special ED,” Tony insisted. “We can’t DO it. It’s just too HARD for us.” The two of them started laughing and El rolled her eyes. She did hate hearing in the two weeks she was placed in a special education class that this made her stupid. Joyce, Will and Jonathan were sure to tell her that it just meant she needed to learn differently since she missed so much as a child. But everyone else in the school was eager to tell her and her classmates that that wasn’t the case; that they were all total idiots. Lisa and Tony didn’t help by using that excuse to get out of work. 

“You can do ANYTHING you put your mind to!” Señora Fresca insisted, and, even though she was strict and stole one of El’s letters, El had to admire this part of her. She DID believe in them, although, bored and tired of copying lists of 20 words every day, El wished she fell for Lisa and Tony’s excuses and gave them less work sometimes. “You – Señora Hopper, you are to finish this list for homework in addition to the assignment I’ve given.”

Double homework?

Just what she needed.

“But…”

“No buts, Señora Hopper.” The bell rang and El felt herself sigh heavily. She gathered her books in her arms, and had everything together until she felt a huge thud on her side. Lisa had knocked directly into her, sending all her books to the floor.

“Oh, SORRY, Señora Hopper,” Lisa teased. “Didn’t see you there.”

“Why don’t you leave her alone, Lisa?” came a voice on the other side of the room. Leslie Baughn, one of the only people who had ever defended El, came over to help her pick up her books. Sure, she was a little…off. She had an earring in her nose, big, dark black hair and black makeup all over her face, and certainly LOOKED like she was wearing a Halloween costume on a regular basis…but she spoke up for El, and that was enough for her.

“What’s it to you, freak?” Lisa asked. Leslie rolled her eyes, handing El her books.

“It’s called being a decent human being. You should try it once in a while.”

“Human being?” Tony retorted. “You look like something out of Night of the Living Dead. What would you know about it?” the two walked off laughing, as El looked gratefully at Leslie’s dark eyes, crusted in makeup.

“Thanks,” El told her smiling. Leslie shrugged.

“Whatever. You have a mouth there, Hopper. You ever try using it and telling these assholes to go screw themselves?”

“Go…screw themselves?” El asked. Leslie giggled a bit.

“You seriously don’t know what that means? You’re a trip, Hopper. A real trip.” With that Leslie walked away and El breathed a sigh of relief. It was lunchtime. Lunch was the only time that she and Will ever got to spend any time together, and it was their one moment of peace for the day.

As she walked, she reached for her letter from Mike and skimmed it again. She landed on his "I miss you" and read it over and over. It made her heart happy; it was one of the few things that did since she moved. She missed him so much it ached. Seeing him every few months since she left was amazing, and speaking to him on the radio once a week was also wonderful, but it was also what Will called a tease. He was there – existing in the same world as she did - but so out of reach. So very out of reach.

However, being with Will was kind of a comfort. The two of them kept the party alive in spirit by talking about them all the time. Will would tell funny stories about when the boys were kids and help El to laugh when she felt like doing nothing but crying. This would come in handy when she would have thoughts of Hop.

Hop…

She wondered if she should mention her visions in her next letter to Mike. Was this something safe to discuss in a letter? She always saw Hopper in her dreams and thought of him. That was nothing new. He was so sweet and understanding about it and helped to soothe her when she thought of Hop and cried. But lately, it was different.

It felt…like it did before. Like it was him. Like she could see what he was doing.

But that wasn’t possible. Hop was gone. They had a memorial service for him. There was no way she could see him. She couldn’t see anyone. Her powers were gone.

Or were they?

She approached her locker and tried again. Ever since she had seen a very clear image of Hop while Will’s radio static was on – Hop with a longer beard and long, straggly hair – she thought it may be possible that she could get into the void again. However, if that were true, she could also do this.

She stared at the combination lock in concentration, and, after turning both ways to see if anyone was looking, put her hand out. She bent her head and gazed at the lock in concentration, trying to apply the same methods she hadn’t tried in over a year.

Nothing.

Not even a little.

“What are you doing?” came Will’s voice behind her, and she turned, startled, hoping he hadn’t seen her hand positioned like that. She and Will had a good thing going in the last few months after an awkward few months of silence, and part of that meant not talking about their roles as The Weirdo with Powers or Zombie Boy. She had no desire to break the good streak now.

“Ugh, it’s that thing your mom was telling us about. Arth….Arthis?”

“Arthritis? El, I don’t think you’ve got that. You’re only fifteen years old.”

“Well…my hand…it hurts.”

“Mine too,” Will agreed as he watched El open her combination lock the real way. The human way. The way that made her convince herself her visions of Hop were just another work of her overactive imagination. “I had to write three essays for class the second week of school. Ugh, can you believe that?”

El laughed, although she couldn’t believe it because the work she had to do was so…simple. So boring. So babyish. She didn’t want to share that with Will who was obviously working hard, but sometimes she wished that people would make her feel smarter.

“Yeah…writing. Writing sucks,” El agreed, although she didn’t entirely agree. She liked writing letters to Mike. She wasn’t as good at it as he was, but she liked doing it. It made her feel just as smart as he was, even if she was sure he caught all her mistakes and that little book smart nerd in him probably wanted to correct them deep down. He never said that though. Not once.

The two of them walked to the cafeteria and took a seat when El noticed Will didn’t have his lunch. She took out her own peanut butter sandwich and looked at him sympathetically, offering him half without a question.

“Again?” El asked, feeling bad the topic had to come up. Will didn’t like to bring up how frequently he was bullied by the kids at school and called a series of names that would have made Joyce ground either of them for repeating.

“Yeah,” Will quietly said, accepting El’s offer. “Thanks.”

“I wish I could do something,” El replied, and she really did. The sad thing was, she was used to being able to do something. She protected her party from monsters and bullies before, and being powerless to stop anyone from hurting the people she loved the most just made her feel weak.

“Trust me, me too,” Will said. “But…well, it’s just high school, right? Just a couple more years and we’ll be off to college with smarter people who won’t be like this. That’s what my mom says anyway.”

College.

El knew that was a place where you went to learn more about a skill so you can grow up and be a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer or one of those jobs. But you had to be really good in school to go there. El wasn’t. She knew her whole life that she could move things and break things, but she had no idea what she could do or where she would go when all of her friends went to that place and had a plan.

El had no plan.

Her plan before moving to Illinois was just not being caught or accidentally hurting someone. Now there was just…existing. Getting through the day. Remembering Hop. Writing to Mike.

“You’ll go too,” Will said, as though reading her mind. “You know, if that’s what you want.”

“I…don’t know,” El said quietly. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Well, we’re only in our second year of high school. You’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.” Will told her, reaching over to grab one of her chips as well. She never asked this, but curiosity came over her.

“What do you want?” El asked. Will looked a little surprised, as if nobody ever thought to ask him such a question before.

“Well…this is going to sound a little dumb.”

“You’re not dumb,” El reminded him. She loved her friends – she loved Will – and nothing made her sadder than hearing anyone say bad things about them, including themselves.

“Well, okay, the thing is…I love art. I mean, I like to draw and, I don’t know, I think it would be kind of cool to do illustrations. You know, for books and comics or maybe even study animation.” There was a pause as El took a minute to think about that. She wasn’t sure what animation was; but, as she so often did, she was embarrassed to ask. Will felt similarly embarrassed, flushed, and bent his head down. “N-never mind, it’s dumb.”

“NO!” El insisted, reaching over to give his hand a reassuring squeeze. “No, it isn’t dumb, Will! It’s a great idea! You draw really good.”

“Well,” Will corrected. “I’m…sorry, I shouldn’t have corrected you.”

“No, you’re right,” El said, taking a chip and smiling. “Well.” That made Will feel a little better and they went back to eating in silence for a moment, when the topic arose curiosity in El and she turned to him again.

“What…what do you think I can do?” She asked. “I mean...for my plan.” Will shrugged.

“Well…I don’t know, El, that’s not up to me. What do you like?”

El was reminded of a year ago when she and Max went shopping and Max asked if she liked a shirt. It seemed so long ago. She thought of that day walking around the store with Max and eating ice cream, and her heart began to hurt a little. 

Worse yet, she still didn’t know what she liked.

She liked Mike. She liked her friends. She liked going back to Hawkins and laughing with everyone. She liked remembering Hop as she wore his big, soft flannel shirt and tried to find traces of his scent under the smell of the laundry detergent that had hidden it. She liked eating Eggos and watching TV. But that was it. She didn’t know what else she could like.

“I…I don’t know.”

“Well…you’re a good friend,” Will assured her. “You like seeing people happy.” 

El nodded. That was true, or so she hoped. She wasn’t always good at making people happy. She didn’t have the words for it a lot of the time.

“So maybe, I don’t know, you can help people out somehow. You can work at a place where you help people. Like…in a hospital or a nursing home…”

“A nursing home?”

“It’s where elderly people go; you know, people who are really old or people who…you know…have trouble with their minds and…”

Will stopped himself, and El was relieved he did. He was talking about people like her mom. People who weren’t able to take care of themselves.

And maybe he was right. Maybe she would be good at those things. But it hurt her heart to think about it.

“I’m sorry,” Will continued.

“It’s okay,” Ell assured him. “I’ll…figure it out. Plenty of time, right?”

“Right,” Will agreed. In fact, that was what they had tons of. Time. Time to sit and think and miss everyone. Time to worry about whether or not El would ever figure out homework or numbers or read better than a little child could. 

With that time, though, eventually came the time she longed for most…Mike Time. Tomorrow was Friday, and then she could hear his sweet, soothing voice again.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Joyce felt her fingers shaking in the rotary wheel of her phone as she dialed Murray’s number.

He said he had something. She’d heard that before. Most of the time that meant that he had a gross exaggeration barely even resembling having something.

It had been fifteen months since she last looked into Hop’s face before turning her head, closing the gate, and turning back to see him disappear.

Disappear…

Humans did not disappear.

There were traces of humans, even if it came down to nothing but ash. The other soldiers had remains, even charred black ones. Hopper had none. And yet there could be no other explanation offered by the emergency personnel who came and later reported the whole thing to be a fire. There was an explosion; she simply perished in it, and its severity left nothing.

Joyce knew that wasn’t true, and she was no stranger to death.

Everyone in Hawkins said she was crazy when she was presented with the body of her son. That was not her son. This was not grief or denial or delusion. She knew her Will and that wasn’t him. She would know him anywhere, living or dead.

She also saw what death looked like. She saw her Bob die directly in front of her. Saw him being ripped apart by those monsters that robbed him of his life and her of her happiness. Death didn’t leave an empty space in its wake – it left some kind of reminder, any kind, that you were there. 

He was somewhere. Somewhere out there in this vast universe, whether ours or someone else’s. And maybe this time, Murray had something that was worth considering.

“Hello. You have reached the voice mail of Murray Bauman…”

Great. She had to listen to this eternal monologue again.

Almost reciting the entire thing word for word, she waited impatiently for Murray to call every other person who would probably never really call him a parasite and finally spoke.

“Murray, it is Joyce, for God’s sake, just pick up the goddamn…”

There was a click.

Wow.

Quick for Murray.

“Joyce, you got my messages!”

“Your messages, the secret code on your voice recording…very subtle, by the way. Suppose someone was on to you and got your number?” There was a pause and Murray sighed.

“That…is a decent point, and I will re-record it, but more importantly, we have to speak. Be over at my place in fifteen minutes.”

“But I’m at work, Murray! I don’t get off officially until five!”

“Well, gosh, it’s just too bad that one of your kids had an emergency. In fact, Will got the crap beaten out of him again and got a concussion when his head was slammed against the school dumpster.”

If Murray wasn’t the only person Joyce could trust might help her find Hop, she would have punched him about 45 times already. Especially knowing that he had a good point and her poor boy was beaten up more times than she liked to admit.

“Fine. But this has got to be quick, because I already got written up once the last time and I don’t need another incident.” She hung up quickly and approached her boss feigning worry. Her boss, usually a stickler, seemed to have a weak spot for bullying stories (as Joyce imagined he was probably bullied too, he was so defensive and insecure), and said she could pick up her son and return within the hour if she clocked out and back in. Joyce sighed deeply as lunch hour was the busiest at the pharmacy where she worked and missing this hour was surely in her favor.

She hoped this would be for more reasons than one.

She drove over to Murray as quickly as she could, groaned her way through looking at his camera and saying her name, title, and order of business, and came in quickly as Murray frantically guided her to his living room in hushed tones.

“Okay, Joyce…I think we’re on our way.”

“What happened?” Joyce asked. Murray went through a series of papers and reached for one that looked wrinkled and messed up. It wasn’t an Illinois paper. This was from Hawkins. It was from a week before.

“What is this?” Joyce asked. “Who sent you a Hawkins paper?”

“I arranged to subscribe and have them delivered here,” Murray continued. “The Russians infiltrate the town of Hawkins and I’m NOT going to keep up with what’s going on there?”

“Okay, fine. So what?” Joyce looked at the cover stories and shook her head, disinterested. “Series of robberies by main street where all the abandoned shops are…what are they robbing if it’s abandoned?”

“That’s not it!” Murray said impatiently. Page four, page four!” Joyce turned to page four, trying not to be concerned about Murray’s condescending tone, when she looked at an article in the center that was small and seemingly not that important.

“Unusual blackout strikes Hawkins.”

“A blackout!” Murray said, reaching his hand over as though this explained everything.

“So?” Joyce asked, unimpressed. “Murray, I get that there were blackouts related to the gate before, but they weren’t the first blackouts that we ever had. Hawkins still needs updates on power lines; they have blackouts. Besides, what’s this got to do with Hop?”

“Look again,” he continued. “The source of the problem was in a wire that was said to be very close to the Steelworks.”

Joyce thought about this. Where did she hear about the Steelworks again? She had asked Will for as much as he could remember but he didn’t like to talk about it, and she didn’t like to press him. They were here to start over, after all.

(And find Hop).

“Okay…”

“And that’s precisely where that blackout started two summers ago. The trouble with the Russians started with some kind of machine that opened up this bizarro universe and trapped Hopper inside of it.”

“So…you think they’re trying to get in again?”

“Possibly, although that’s pretty stupid and they’re not stupid. Their activities were hushed up last time but people know about them and they don’t want it. No, no, I think that this is coming from the other side. Someone is trying to open again from the inside.”

“Hop,” Joyce suggested, feeling hope for the first time in a while. But then again, there were too many holes; it didn’t make sense. “But wait…I mean, can he do that? Has anyone ever been able to open the gate from the inside before?”

“Maybe,” Murray said. “We don’t know.”

“And how would he?” Joyce asked. “I mean…he’s a fighter and a cop but he doesn’t have powers like El did. He couldn’t single handedly get himself out.”

“He’s a veteran, Joyce!” Murray shouted. “A Vietnam vet who worked homicide in New York City and got himself out of a lot of shit!”

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean he can open the portal to another dimension!” Joyce argued. “I mean..this could be anything. It could be coincidence. I just don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket if…”

“We don’t know if he’s alone,” Murray continued. “Years of scientific exploration, who knows who else is in there? Dr. Brenner has mysteriously vanished for years and I’m sure he knows this universe better than anyone…”

“Hop is not teaming up with Dr. Brenner to get out of the Upside Down, if that’s what you’re suggesting. That man abused his daughter for years. He wouldn’t ever work with him to do anything.”

“To get back to that daughter, I think he’d do anything,” Murray persisted. “Because you…people for some reason love these children that you’ve brought into the world or acquired and the chance to help them would make you do all kinds of crazy things.”

Joyce pondered this. It was strange that the same source of the blackout after so much time. It was also strange that this also seemed to happen when El was waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares. A small piece of Joyce often wondered if El was having visions again – real visions. But that wasn’t possible. El couldn’t power her way out of her homework, let alone have the ability to find Hopper so far away. 

“Look…it’s a start,” Murray continued. “Hear me out. I’m keeping my eye on this and seeing if there are any follow up reports. You keep your eye on national news and let me know, since I generally don’t trust it.”

“Of course not,” Joyce replied, rolling her eyes. Murray’s face softened for a rare moment as he looked at her through his thick, ridiculous glasses.

“We’re going to find him, Joyce. You know he’s out there. I know he’s out there. We will get him back.” Joyce gave him a small, rare smile. “You know, that way you guys can just screw each other’s brains out and get it over with.”

“Goodbye, Murray,” Joyce groaned, walking out. And though she looked a bit more skeptical than she was, a piece of her heart was afraid because he just gave her something she didn’t have in over a year.

Hope.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Friday. 5:00 PM.

It was Mike time, and El couldn’t wait. She practically ran home to sit in her bedroom, close the door, and enjoy the rare time that she got to spend talking to Mike about her week and his. This used to bother Will, who thought they could talk to him together, but since Mike had promised to talk to Will immediately after so that they could each have their own private conversation, it had been a lot more pleasant.

It took Mike a little over an hour to walk over to where Dustin’s radio was, so some days he’d be late. She didn’t mind; he always came up eventually, and hearing his voice made her forget how worried those few minutes made her.

She lay down and decided to rest while she waited. It had been a long week. She got back her first math test that she failed terribly – a 52%. Will tried explaining her mistakes to her, but she was so upset and disappointed that she could barely follow. She heard Will and Joyce discuss the possibility of getting her a tutor when she just allowed herself to walk into her own room and escape. Escape to a place where she could read Mike’s letter and remember old times and remember when she felt good about herself again.

“El? El it’s Mike, do you copy?” 

His voice went through her like fire, warming her entire body and enabling her to jump out of her spot and over to her walkie.

“Mike, it’s El. Oh, it’s so good to hear you!”

“It’s good to hear you too! I have had the WORST week!” Mike answered, and she smiled as even the sound of his frustrated whine made her miss him; it made her picture the narrowed look in his big, brown eyes as he said that and the sadness of her own week melted away.

“Me too,” El continued. “You first.”

“Well, let’s see,” Mike started. “Number one, you’re not here and I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” El interrupted. 

“Number two, Roger stole my clothes after gym class so I had to sneak in to the payphone in my underwear to call my mother to come bring me another set of clothes. Then she had to bring them to the locker room. My mother had to come into the boys’ locker room, El! And then a bunch of guys said she was hot and I wanted to punch them in the face!”

“Oh, wow,” El replied, furious on Mike’s behalf and wishing beyond anything that she could take Roger and throw him through a wall like she used to be able to.

“Number three, Dad’s not happy with my first grade in physics, which, by the way, is a 91. Do you know how hard physics is? I had the highest score in the class and he’s still not happy!” Suddenly, El’s cheeks flushed and she felt even stupider than she did before. She kept forgetting how smart all the boys were and how easy school was for them. If Mike’s dad thought a 91 was bad, what would he think of a 52?

“Number four…this is weird, but…well…hear me out…I’m a little freaked out.”

“What?” El asked, feeling her heart leap to her throat. Were other weird things happening? Things that could signal that maybe those visions she had of Hop weren’t really visions at all?

“There was a blackout,” Mike said quietly. “A bad one. It was weird; the last time we had one like it was…it was, you know, near the fourth of July. Right before…you know…”

She broke up with him. She had visions of Billy. She watched him grab her by her neck fearing that she was about to breathe her last and wouldn’t be able to help any of her friends, and that he’d kill them all one by one. She felt pain beyond anything she’d ever experienced in her life as the monster ripped into her leg and threw her around like a rag doll. They lost Hop…

“Well…okay,” El replied, not knowing what else to say. “So…just a blackout.”

“Here’s the weird thing,” Mike continued. “They say it’s coming from steelworks. You know, that place that you said the source was last time? That’s where the blackout started.”

Steelworks.

El’s mind flashed back to that vision of Billy in the void. Billy threatening to end her. Goosebumps rose on her arms. She tried so hard to remove those images from her mind, but she simply couldn’t.

Then she remembered…

Max.

Any memories of Billy were probably nothing to El compared to what they were to her.

“Well…Max…I mean, is she okay? Is she worried too?” Mike hesitated, which was really scary because he almost never did.

“She’s…quiet. Which is weird, I mean, you know Max. She’s never quiet. It’s the one thing that got her and Lucas back together. He kind of calmed her a little bit trying to convince her it must be some kind of a coincidence, but I don’t know. I don’t think it is. Max obviously doesn’t either.”

El’s heart beat like a bongo drum. That must mean that this monster once again was getting ready to resurface. This monster who knew Mike, Max, Dustin and Lucas. Only this time, there was nothing that El could do to stop it.

“But, hey, it can’t be as bad,” Mike continued. “That monster – it’s dead. We saw it die. There may be some other freaky things in there, but, I mean…now that people know about it I’m sure someone from the government is investigating or something. Besides, I mean, that was it. That was all. Nothing else weird has happened. Oh, except Dustin made the Lacrosse Team; don’t ask how that happened.”

“La…crosse?”

“Yeah, it’s a sport where players throw this ball thing to each other with sticks. Hard to explain. Dustin’s never played a sport in his life but he just found out that Suzie likes some big lacrosse player and thinks he’s cute so of course he’s got to compete.” While El was relieved to find something to giggle about, her mind was still racing. She saw Hopper a few times. The power was out again from the Steelworks. What was happening?

“What about you?” Mike asked. “How was your week?”

El hesitated. She felt weird telling him what had happened to her. Her test score was lower and seeing Hopper either made her crazy or the fact that something scary was happening true, and she didn’t want to recognize either thing.

“El,” Mike said softly, putting her at ease. “You can tell me anything. It’s me.”

Trust and certainty enveloped El and she took a deep breath.

“Lisa and Tony make fun of me; they say I’m ugly and weird, I got a 52 on a math test because I’m stupid and I keep seeing Hop over and over again and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

There was a long pause, and for a second, El wondered if Mike decided to turn his radio off and run away. But then she heard him sigh deeply, almost as if he was angry.

“Who the hell are Lisa and Tony?” he asked, his voice changing from soft and sweet to furious.

“Bullies. They’re in my class. They keep…knocking into me and dropping my books…”

“So, El, tell someone!”

“No, like you said,” El continued, feeling tears welling in her eyes as she released this frustration for the first time in two weeks. “That’s telling. Makes it worse.”

“Well, they’re idiots, El. Stay away from them. If I was there I’d find that barbell I used on Billy and kick their sorry asses.” El had to giggle a bit at that, tears still falling, and continued to listen to him. “You are NOT ugly. You’re beautiful.”

“No I’m not, Mike.”

“YES, you are. In my eyes you are. And, well, my eye doctor says I have 20/20 vision, so that’s got to count for something, right?” El giggled a bit, and then he continued. “Aha! Got you to laugh. All right, number two, you’re not stupid. Not at all. Not by a longshot.”

“Then why do I only get 52?”

“Because school is brand new to you, El! You just started! Give yourself some time! You have to get used to it and you’ll do better!”

“But…your dad was mad at you for 91.”

“My dad is nuts!” Mike shouted. “I can’t stand that he’s like that! When we…when I have kids one day, I’m going to be different.”

El’s breath stopped.

When WE?

Did Mike really just say that?

“Did…did you just say…”

“Hopper,” Mike interrupted quickly, both out of embarrassment it seemed and a desire to get to this subject before it was forgotten. “What did you mean when you said that you’re seeing him?” El breathed in deeply. This has been the first time she’d told anyone this and she was glad she was telling Mike first, but she still had no idea what it meant.

“Sometimes…right before bed, or if there’s static on a radio, I’ll be getting ready to fall asleep and I’ll…see him. But he doesn’t look like him. He looks…different.” 

“How?” Mike asked, his soft, sweet voice embracing her like a warm hug. El shrugged, forgetting she couldn’t see him.

“Longer beard. Longer hair. And…he’s not talking, but he’s…looking for something. Like he’s trying to find something.” There was another long pause, and El wondered what was going on in Mike’s mind. Was he thinking what she was thinking? “Mike?”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m just…thinking,” Mike continued. “And…these visions…have you had any others? Have you…I mean, have you seen that you can do anything else that you used to be able to do?”

“Tried,” El answered. “Tried to move my combination lock. Wouldn’t move.”

“Okay, well, then maybe it’s not your powers,” Mike said, his voice thoughtful and focused. “Maybe you’re just missing him. Thinking about him. I mean, it’s lonely at school and that can make you want him back, right?”

This thought crossed El’s mind as well, which she found kind of disappointing. A big piece of her wanted these visions to be real, because that would mean that Hop was real – that he was there and that he could speak to her again. She would have given anything in the world for that. Anything at all.

“El?” Mike asked. “El, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” El said softly.

“El,” Mike reminded her. “Friends don’t lie. I learned from the Nana incident, remember.” El felt the tears fall from her eyes again and realized how deeply Mike knew her; how, without even looking at her, he knew when she was sad and just what to say to make her feel better.

“I feel…lost,” El said. “Lonely. I miss him. I miss you. I just…I wish I were different. I wish things were different.”

“El, it’s okay,” Mike reassured her, and she thought she could hear his voice crack as well. “I know how you feel. I miss you too. So much it hurts sometimes.”

“Hurts bad,” El affirmed, her voice quivering. “Worse than that monster on my leg.” 

“I know,” Mike said. “I mean, not the monster part, but…I know. Hurts worse than seeing that monster on your leg, and you can’t imagine how much that hurt me. But I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

“You’re so far away,” El cried, wiping her tears away with her hand and wishing that it was Mike’s long, lanky hand doing it instead. “I just…I just want to be with you..”

“Me too,” Mike continued, his voice shakier and also full of tears. “But El – Listen to me El – things will get better. In a few years, I can go to college and I can drive, and it just so happens that there are lots of great colleges right near you – right in Chicago – that have great math and science programs and I can be closer to you. We can see each other all the time. And then I can just drive a few minutes to your house and be there whenever you need me. It’ll be here before you know it. And until then, I’ll keep writing you. I’ll keep calling you. We’ll see each other when we can and do what we’ve been doing. We’ve made it almost a year, El. We can do it. YOU can do it.” As tears dripped down her face, El responded in the way that always brought her comfort.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

El held onto her radio with a grip that eased much of her tension as Mike’s voice soothed her the rest of their conversation, not realizing that, just outside of her room, someone was listening in to their conversation. Someone who had several severe pains in his neck in the past week as well.

Will.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As things develop for both El and Mike, changes surface and they realize how difficult it is to be away from one another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! Please send me comments if you like where this is going; I love them! Please bear in mind the errors in El’s letter are intentional. I wrote as someone who has not received quality literacy instruction and would therefore make spelling and mechanical errors. Here goes part two...

_09-15-86_

_Dear Mike,_

_Joyce showd me that you can write the date useing numbers so I wantd to try. It is better then speling the month. I miss you a lot. Thank you for makeing me feel better on the walkie agen yestrday. School is really hard. Takes a long time. I am slow. But Mrs Link says I get better. I use capitol letters the rite way now and that is good. Lisa is still meen. She made fun of Hops shirt and said I look like a farmir. I cryed. A girl Leslee made me feel beter. She is wierd to. Has dark make up and an earing in her nose. But she is nice. I want earings, but Joyce is not sure because she says Hop wood not want me to, but Hop is gone and so I feel bad. I want earings but I do not want Hop sad. Will he be sad even tho he is gone? I askd Joyce and she got sad and started to cry even tho I did not meen for her to cry. I have not seen Hop agen in a wile. Oh and Tonee is Lisas boyfrend but he came over to me and toched my hair and said he cood show me a good time. I do not want a good time with Tonee and it is not rite because he has a girlfrend and I have a boyfrend and I said that and he lafed and said something about how he cood do stuff to me that my boyfrend did not no and make me screm and I said no my boyfrend is beter then you and I dont want to screem then lisa came and that was it. Joce makes me eat brusel spouts and they taste like vomit. I gag. I got 63 on my math test. Joyce said beter. 11 more so that is good luck. I miss you and I love you so much. I want to kiss you again. Can not wait. Love, El_

“Mike, be real. What are you seriously going to do?”

“Get on a bus with a baseball bat, go to Illinois and kick Tony’s ass!” Mike shouted, picking up one of his old toys and throwing it across his basement. Dustin, Lucas and Max looked at him with a mix of sympathy and fear. He never had to worry about anyone else trying to get El’s attention because he and El were so entwined with one another, so to imagine that some other guy would go over to El and say those inappropriate things that she didn’t even understand and disrespect her like that did something he never experienced before. A monster – probably bigger than the one they fought in the mall – roared in his chest. A monster so furious and blinded with rage that he felt confident his 110 pound form could somehow murder Tony with his bare hands.

“Relax, Mike. El doesn’t need powers to be badass,” Max reminded him. “Sounds like she handled it perfectly well. She pretty much told him to get lost. And she doesn’t get how completely disgusting what he’s saying to her is, so at least her innocence is saving her in that sense. But, man, I would like to kick this guy’s ass too just for being a goddamn pig.”

“Um, hello! Earth to delusional people!” Lucas called. “Look at us! We can’t even kick ass for ourselves. We’re all sitting here trading off who’s doing Roger’s homework to avoid being beaten up, so obviously nobody is going to Illinois to kick Tony’s ass.”

“Right, and it’s really not worth getting arrested for,” Dustin continued. “A criminal record would really look pretty bad on college applications, and all those Chicago based universities mean more time with El, right Mike?”

“Still…another guy looking at El like that…thinking of her like that, while I’m here miles away and can’t do anything about it, it just…it makes me want to…”

“It sucks,” Max continued, going over to Mike and putting a reassuring arm on his shoulder. “You’re right, but, Mike, he backed off. The guy has his own idiot girlfriend to be dirty with and I’m sure that El is smart enough to stay the hell away from him.”

“If he so much as even thinks of laying a FINGER on her hair again…”

“What?” Lucas asked. “What are you going to do? Beat him in Dungeons and Dragons?”

“I’ll…I’ll bring Steve with me.”

“Steve has won one fight in his life,” Dustin reminded him. “Not exactly your best plan.” Mike sighed heavily and threw himself down on his couch. It was always hard to be away from El, but it was even harder knowing that she couldn’t protect herself the way she used to. Knowing how beautiful she was and how other guys were bound to notice. Guys that were disgusting and crude and didn’t know that Mike even existed. And she didn’t even have powers to protect herself. 

“Just try your best to ignore it,” Lucas advised him. “I know it’s hard…”

“Right, because if some guy said all that to Max you’d be calm.”

“No guy would say that to me because I’d kick him in the nuts before he even completed his first sentence,” Max interrupted, eyes determined and angry. “You people are pigs. Besides, more importantly, can we rewind? What’s that part about seeing Hopper?” 

A lump formed in Mike’s throat.

Shit.

He forgot he read that part too.

He never mentioned to the rest of the party that El had visions with Hopper. He was too afraid, especially since Max reacted so dramatically to the power outage a few weeks ago. 

“Oh…that…”

“Oh, that,” Max mocked. “A slight detail to just mention as an afterthought, Mike, especially after the blackout.”

“You’re still on that?” Lucas asked, turning to Max with a concerned look in his eyes. “Max, I thought we talked about this. Repeatedly. It was just a blackout.”

“A blackout at the source, Lucas! Do you really think that’s a coincidence?”

“No, it’s logical,” Lucas said, taking a seat alongside Max and trying to soften her resolve. Mike exchanged an apologetic look with Dustin. He didn’t mean for the conversation to go this way at all. “Who knows what the monster did over there while he was wreaking havoc; the destruction he caused.”

“Right,” Dustin agreed, trying to soothe Max’s mind as well. “And it’s not like Hawkins has a stellar electrical setup as it is. If they caused a major disruption to the system it’s bound to falter now and then.”

“But it hasn’t!” Max retorted, standing up and pacing, looking from one to the other as though they were all crazy and she was the only rational one there. “It hasn’t had regular problems and it just caused a massive blackout after over a year. That doesn’t strike any of you geniuses as being a little odd?”

“No,” the three boys said in unison, but Mike couldn’t help feeling as though his answer wasn’t entirely honest. He understood Max’s concern and felt it himself, but admitting it would be feeding into Max’s stress, and that was the last thing the group needed.

Max had been off since Billy had died. It was understandable, but it was still off putting. Max was usually vocal and that was nothing new, but there would be moments where the group of them would be watching a movie or playing cards and she would go silent. For Max, that wasn’t normal. Max didn’t do silent. She was outspoken and stubborn, and for her to simply sit and not say a word started to worry the boys. It started to worry Mike. Since he and Max had worked together to try to get El out of the mall safely, things were different with them. There was an unspoken trust and respect. They each knew the other meant the world to El and that was something worth protecting. 

He was afraid she would do something desperate like go to the steelworks herself.

Not like that was unsafe given what they knew. The monster was gone. The source was no longer a source. There was no danger there.

But what if there was?

If something happened to Max – El’s friend, Lucas’s girl, and now Mike’s friend and a member of the party - and Mike didn’t do a thing to stop it, he knew he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.

“Look, Max, I get it,” Lucas said, walking over to her and placing his hands on her forearms soothingly. Max, usually too independent and fiery to fall for affectionate ploys, allowed him this, and her eyes looked a little softer than they had before. “It’s hard. It’s been hard for you. And this thing…what it did to Billy…I know it still hurts. But…it’s gone.”

Max looked down, pensive. Mike and Dustin were looking to see if she would accept this; they always feared for how she would react. It was silent until a creak in the staircase distracted Mike.

“Oh, not again,” he muttered, then went over to the staircase to see a sight that had been more frequently occurring.

Holly – her eyes startled at being discovered for the seventh time – stared at Mike with widened eyes. Her blond pigtails almost flew as she turned around to rush up the stairs.

“Holly, what have I told you about spying?” Mike asked.

“I’m sorry!” Holly called, hurrying out of the room.

“I’m telling mom!” Mike called, as she closed the door behind her. He turned around to see eveyrone’s amused expressions. “What?”

“I’m telling mom!” Lucas imitated, and the other two laughed. Mike, frustrated, rolled his eyes, but had to force back his own smile.

“What? She’s six; what else am I supposed to do?”

“TALK to her!” Max replied, shaking her head like Mike was the biggest idiot on Earth. “She’s never done this before, she’s getting out of her baby stage and dealing with more school…I mean, maybe she’s just lonely and a little sad and wants company. Have you ever thought about that?”

“She’s SIX. She’s just a kid who wants to spy on me,” Mike insisted. 

“I have to back Mike up here,” Lucas said, standing alongside him. “Neither of you two have little sisters. You have no idea what they’re like.”

“Exactly,” Mike agreed, grateful to Lucas for having his back. Holly was never like this, but she was always a baby. Cute, quiet, just sitting in the background. Lately, especially after Nancy left for college, she had the habit of being extra interested in what Mike and his friends were doing and wanting to know what they were talking about. How could he talk to her about that? He felt like he and Holly didn’t discuss much outside of which toys she liked and what she wanted for breakfast.

“You can talk to a six-year-old, you know,” Max replied, as if reading his mind. “They’re little but they are, indeed, people. Just so you know.”

“Fine, I’ll talk to her!” Mike said. “Can we please just…do something? Get out of here, go see a movie? I think we all need to debrief from all of this.”

“But…then we’ll miss the bus to Illinois and we can’t be spectators in your boxing match with Tony,” Max teased, and, while the mention of Tony punched Mike in the gut, he was glad that his friends could somehow find a way to get him to laugh at the whole thing.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Holly played thoughtlessly with the hairbrush gliding down her My Little Pony’s tail. She tried to get excited and happy about how shiny and purple it was with all of her brushing. But she couldn’t.

Everyone was busy again today. Mommy was doing her exercises and then said she had a lot of cleaning to do. Daddy was at work. Mike was with his friends. She knew they’d never let her sit with them, but she thought she could try.

It was a bad day at school. Mrs. Buddstein yelled at her in front of the class for being a bad listener. She said that she was not in kindergarten anymore and that she was supposed to act like a big girl. But Holly couldn’t help it. It was hard to listen. It always was. 

Mrs. Buddstein said on the first day of school that you can tell a grown up if you were upset about things. But that was a lie. Because grown ups just want you to play and be happy and they don’t care if you are sad. Kids are not allowed to be sad. Grown ups are too busy for that.

The problem was that Holly was not just sad. She was a little scared. She kept having bad dreams and every time she tried to tell Mommy about them, Mommy would say it was just a nightmare and she just had to relax and go back to sleep. But they didn’t just happen when she slept. She had them a lot.

She saw a girl. That girl that Mike brought over last Christmas; the one who was quiet and nice and pretty. She was still pretty, but messy and hurt. She looked really scared. 

The girl was sad. She was crying. A man – a man who looked like one of the big bosses that Daddy worked with and seemed scary at his work picnic – was talking to her. He was tall and skinny with big white hair. She looked afraid of him like he was going to beat her up. And she was trapped. She was in a chair and her hands were tied there with ropes that looked like metal. He was yelling at her for going away. He said she could never be like any of those people. He said she was going to stay with him forever, and that, if she did not, all her friends would die. But then the weird thing happened. The girl screamed “Mike!”

Why would she call for Mike?

Did Mike know this scary man? Was he in trouble? Was someone going to get him too?

Holly thought maybe if she listened, she could find out more. Because she knew Mommy was wrong and this was not pretend. The man seemed real. Holly had seen real things before. She remembered seeing Mike and Nancy getting hurt when they didn’t come to the carnival with her and Daddy and then they were found near the fire at the mall. But it wasn’t a fire. It was a monster. A big, ugly monster and a scary man. But she couldn’t tell Mommy that, because Mommy was starting to get mad when Holly said silly things.

So she tried to hide on top of the stairs when Mike’s friends came over, because they always talked in the basement. Most of the time they were talking about movies or comics or boring school stuff. But sometimes, Mike talked about L. They called that girl L. That was weird. But then sometimes they talked about Eleven. She was a number or a letter? If she was L or Eleven, why did Mike tell Mommy that her name was Jane? Were Mike and his friends crazy? 

They probably were.

But then again, Holly probably was too. That’s what the kids at school called her. The crazy girl. Because sometimes she would stop in the schoolyard and just stand there while she saw this poor girl L or 11 or Jane again. Sometimes it was so sad, she’d start crying. When people asked what was wrong, she couldn’t tell them. Mommy would get mad. 

Everybody seemed to get mad lately.

Holly shook her head, and kept brushing her ponies. If they were going to live in a house with angry people, they could at least look pretty.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mike hurried up the hill as fast as he could to get to Dustin’s radio. It seemed as though Friday couldn’t come fast enough and he needed to hear El’s voice. He needed to hear that Tony stayed far, far away from her and didn’t lay a finger on her. He needed to hear that she wasn’t seeing Hop anymore. He needed to hear her voice lighten as it did when she laughed. 

Panting, sweating, although admittedly not as badly as he would when it was in the dead of summer, Mike plopped onto the grass and lay down as he pressed picked up the receiver and signaled for El.

“El? It’s me. Do you copy?”

Not even a second later, much to his relief, he heard her pick up.

“Mike, it’s me. Guess what?”

Her voice; it sounded different than he expected from her letter. It was bright and happy and cheerful. The last he heard her like that was when they laughed at Hop’s face when he walked in on them and they lay there with magazines. It had been ages. 

She was happy.

Something inside of him warmed, but another piece – a small, stubborn piece that loved her in a way that was sometimes all consuming – felt sad. She was happy and he had nothing to do with it. But that was selfish. It was awful and he wouldn’t tell her that. She was happy, after all, and that was all that mattered.

“El, what?”

“Passed my first math test! Got a 71!” 

“El, that’s great!” Mike told her, sincerely happy that she was showing some progress. He knew she was capable. He could hardly imagine what she’d be able to do if her Papa had allowed her to go to school and learn and live a normal kid life. “Congratulations! I told you you could do it!”

“Well, yeah, it’s all thanks to my tutor! Oh he’s going to be so happy!”

He.

He?

_He?!_

“You…you have a tutor?” Mike asked in a forced attempt to be light and causal, reminding himself what Max told him so long ago. She wasn’t his. She was her own person with a will of her own.

“Yes, Joyce helped me get one. From school.”

Oh.

From school.

So this had to be a teacher who made extra money on the side, right? The Paul thing was just his way of pretending to be young and cool and relatable.

“Oh, so what, he’s a teacher, right?”

“No, actually, he’s a student at the high school!” El continued brightly. “Paul…Richards? I think that’s it. He’s a junior and he helps people who need to do better in school.”

A junior?

Some older guy was sitting with El one on one and teaching her about math?

Mike tried to tell his beating heart to shut up and considered reality. Who tutored other kids? People like him and Dustin and Lucas, right? This guy was probably a huge nerd.

“Oh, well, it’s good you’re keeping him company then. I mean, if he tutors he must not have much to do with other kids.”

“Oh he has a lot of friends,” El continued. “In fact, they stopped bothering Will. He told them to.”

As relieved as Mike was to hear that this guy had influence over whatever was bothering Will, the fact that he would go out of his way to make El happy – his El – did something to Mike that made him feel really angry at himself. It awoke that monster in him that had already been tickled enough with the presence of another pervert crossing his girlfriend’s path. 

He tried his best to hear Max again.

She isn’t yours.

She’s her own person…

“Well, that’s good. I mean, just be careful. You know, these popular types, they can sometimes be real jerks.” He heard a soft giggle from the other end, and as much as El’s laugh usually eased his mind, this time it put a lump in his throat.

“He’s not a jerk, Mike. He’s very nice. He’s a good tutor.”

Tutor.

She just called him a tutor.

Not a friend, not yet. 

This would be okay!

“Mike…are you okay?”

Hearing the happiness in her voice fade nearly broke Mike’s heart. She was calling him happy to share this news and he was being selfish about it. He was supposed to support her. He was supposed to encourage her to be happy. This was wrong. He would silence it…

“I’m fine! I’m fine I’m…happy. I’m so happy for you El. See? I told you that you were smart. And I bet the next time you’ll get an even higher score.”

“I hope so,” El said, her voice happy again. Conversation resumed as usual; they swapped stories about their week, and as good as it felt to hear her voice, something in Mike started to hurt in a way that he didn’t expect. It longed to know more. The monster wanted to be fed, and it wouldn’t rest until it was.

After a sweet goodbye, Mike immediately picked up his radio again.

“Will? It’s Mike. Do you copy?”

Like El, Will picked up fairly quickly.

“Mike, thank God, I swear, I’m losing my mind over here.”

Uh oh.

What was happening?

“Is everything okay?”

“It’s just…school work and all these people at school suck and…well, at least they stopped taking my lunch and throwing me in the dumpster, so that’s progress.”

Ah.

This would be a perfect segue. A transition that didn’t make Mike sound completely El centered.

“Yeah, I heard that El’s Super Tutor got them to stop.”

“Amen to super tutor,” Will continued. “If he’s not getting paid already my mom should totally pay him. He’s saving her money in medical expenses for me, after all.”

“Yeah, about that,” Mike said, trying hard to word this the right way. He knew Will didn’t like their conversations focusing too much on El, and he certainly wanted to try not to be too overbearing and jealous, as difficult as it was. “This guy…is he okay?” 

“Well, yeah, he’s only a total Golden Boy,” Will went on. “En route to Yale, he thinks. Football jock. Straight A student.”

“And…well…do you think…I mean…is he…” 

Shit.

How would Mike ask this question without sounding totally weird?

“I mean…is he…you know, good looking?” There was a moment of silence and Mike heard a very distinctive Will sigh of disapproval.

“Are you kidding, Mike?”

“What?”

“You’re jealous of El’s tutor.”

“No! No I am not! I just…you know, want to know these things because, I mean, El’s new at stuff like this and the idea of her being completely gaga over…”

“Gaga? You literally just said gaga. Are you serious?”

“I just…”

“Mike. It’s me. Be honest.”

Those words gave Mike great comfort and he took a deep breath in, closing his eyes. He couldn’t talk about these things with Lucas or Max and he generally avoided sharing them with Will because in the last couple of years they bothered him. 

“Fine. I’m jealous, okay? I think of El literally all the time and all I want to do is be with her again and she’s with some Golden Boy football stud teaching her math. I’m over here on the bottom of the popularity caste system getting my ass kicked every day. Do you really blame me here?”

“Mike…when El looks at this guy, she doesn’t see all that. When she looks at you, she doesn’t see some…caste system…whatever you said. The only person she’s gaga with is you. I live with her. I see her every day. Your name comes up every day. Repeatedly. Trust me.”

Those words gave Mike some relief, as Will and El had been spending a lot of time together lately and he would certainly know. It also felt good to see that he somewhat understood him.

“And…sorry, but, yeah. He is. Good looking.”

Oh, shit.

“Damn it. Just lay it out. What does he look like?”

“Come on, Mike, you really want me to…”

“Yes, just tell me!” Will sighed deeply, his voice sounding unsure. 

“Well…he’s tall. And he’s build and cut, but not, like, bodybuilder Hulk Hogan built. Like…you know, normal. And he’s got darkish hair kind of like yours but not so crazy.”

“Gee, thanks!” Mike groaned, falling on the grass in despair.

“And blueish greenish eyes . And like, eerily perfect white teeth.”

“Damn. For even you to notice this it must be really bad, huh?” It got really silent again over the radio, and Mike wondered what he said wrong. “Will? Will, you still there?”

“Y-yeah, but I think…I mean, I’ve got to…I have homework.”

Mike had to be honest?

Really?

“Come on, Will, what did I say? Look, I’m sorry. I’ll stop being a crazy alpha male and calm myself down. El’s gaga with me, I get it…”

“No, it’s…nothing. Look I seriously have to go. I’ll talk to you later.” 

With that the radio signal cut out, leaving Mike with a series of unanswered questions. Was this guy really that good looking? Did El notice? Did he notice how good looking she was? What was with Will? What was happening over there?

Mike’s thoughts drifted to the idea of creating one of those beams, like in Star Trek, where he could just transport over to Illinois, be with the girl he loved and his best friend, and everything could be back to normal again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your comments and feedback everyone! This chapter takes place after a bigger time jump. There are things that happen in between - like Leslie and El becoming closer friends - that just happen naturally and aren't due to any major events. I hope to illustrate natural progress in this story; much like we just accept Joyce and Bob caught up and started dating, there may be things that come up due to natural behind-the-scenes events. I hope you enjoy the newest installment!

_Chapter 3_

_October 27, 1986_

_Dear El,_

_I was so glad to hear you so happy on the phone the other day. I’m glad that you got your first 90 on a math test. I’m seriously so proud of you! If it were me, and I had to start school for the first time in tenth grade having been through what you have, I think I’d lose my mind. You’re amazing. You’re seriously amazing. I hope you know that._

_I’m also glad to hear that Leslie started sitting at lunch with you and Will. It’s always good to have a new friend, even if she is a little different. As long as she’s a good person on the inside, right? If this girl is looking out for you with those idiot bullies, then I’d say keep her around. I’m glad you haven’t mentioned them again. I really hope they’ve left you alone, especially Tony._

_Things here are a little better. Roger found someone else to terrorize for now because this kid ratted him out for smoking in the boy’s bathroom and got him benched from football practice. I feel bad for this other kid, but I’m glad I haven’t seen the inside of a locker in a while. Maybe your powers ARE working and you somehow found a way to keep bullies away from the party!_

_Things are weird with my little sister, Holly. Max says I’m being ridiculous and she’s just a little kid but it’s so annoying, El. She’s following me constantly. She’s like my shadow. If she wants something, I wish she’d just say so. And it always feels like she’s spying on me. What do you think, El? What do you think I should do about her?_

_It’s almost Halloween! Although once you start high school it’s mostly just parties with people drinking and being stupid. One of Max’s almost friends from the skateboard park invited us to one and everyone else is excited to go. I don’t know if I really want to; it’s not my thing. I might just go because it’s something to do. I really wish I could go trick or treating. Candy beats alcohol any day. Wow, now I really do sound like a seven-year-old! What are you and Will doing? Maybe Leslie could join you? Maybe you can just catch up on scary movies and stuff. Will can show you a few really cool ones!_

_Just another month until we have Thanksgiving together again and I can’t wait! It will be so good to see you again! Just get lots of Chapstik ready, because I can’t WAIT to kiss you again and I might until your lips chap!_

_I’ll talk to you Friday. Promise. I miss you._

_Love,_

_Mike ,_

El smiled to herself peeking at her letter in between classes. It felt so good to make Mike proud with her progress in school. She always knew he liked and admired her powers, but to feel smarter around him was exhilarating. She knew how smart he was and she always wanted nothing more than to match up.

It was nice to hear that he liked her new friendship with Leslie. It happened so naturally. Leslie came to her rescue so many times that it stood to reason they’d all start hanging out. El didn’t tell Mike over the phone about Tony and Lisa and how they’ve continued to terrorize her. Lisa was her usual self, but Tony was the one who really scared El more. He kept looking at her…funny. Staring at her. She couldn’t explain it, but it was a way she didn’t like. She didn’t understand. He and Lisa were always kissing. Why did he look at her?

These thoughts were interrupted by a gentle tap on her shoulder.

“Hey, there, Jane, just heard about your 90! Way to go!” El turned around and faced Paul with a big smile. He was one of the few people at school who called her Jane instead of El or Hopper, and it had a pleasant sound to it. She couldn’t believe that someone who was kind of popular wanted to talk to her.

“Thanks!” El replied, grabbing her books for her next class and returning the smile. “Thank you for showing me about integers.”

“No problem,” Paul said. “Hey, do you need a hand with those books there? Looks like a lot.” El looked down, surprised. It wasn’t a lot of books. Why would she have trouble carrying them?

“No, thanks, I’m okay,” she replied. “But thank you.” Paul laughed a little and El wondered if she said something very stupid. She often wondered that around him. He was just so…normal. “What?”

“You said thank you once, El,” Paul continued. “If you say thank you twice, it’s just a little redundant.”

“Re-dun…dant?”

“Yeah, you know, it means you’re repeating the same thing twice. Like 'No thanks, but thank you.'” El looked down, her cheeks flushing red, and his expression changed to one of slight worry. “But, no, Jane – wow, I’m sorry, I’m being a jerk. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I just…I guess I’m in tutor mode.”

‘It’s okay,” El replied, feeling a little better. “So you can meet in the library? At three?”

“Same Bat time, same Bat channel!” El looked at him confused. “Don’t tell me you’ve never watched Batman.”

Batman…she’d heard that before. Dustin or Will or one of the boys talked about it.

“A comic?”

“Yeah but it was also a show and…never mind, it’s just a silly joke I made. Actually, speaking of bats and comics and costumes…there’s going to be that big Halloween party over at Marcy Park’s house this Friday night. You want to come?” 

A party.

El was being invited to a party?

She’d heard of those. She saw people go to them on All My Children or Miami Vice. But to actually go to one? In real life?

“A party?”

“Yeah. You know – food, drinks, fun. You like fun, right?” El thought about it. Was that a trick question? Was he laughing at her? Did he think she was boring?

“I…Fun is good. It’s…fun.”

“Ahhh redundant again,” Paul teased. Then he looked at her softly. There was something a little weird about it. It was kind of the way Mike looked at her. Only it wasn’t Mike, so it was a little…unsettling. “So, what do you say? Friday? Eight o’clock? I could meet you there if you want, or I could pick you up if you'd rather...”

“Well…can Will and Leslie come too?” El asked, not wanting to leave either of her friends out. His face changed; he was still smiling, but it looked almost forced.

“Will…Will and Leslie?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to leave them out.” He looked a bit annoyed about something, but smiled back at her. It was hard not to, her dimpled smile being as contagious as it was. His teeth were really white. It was a bit weird.

“Yeah, sure, the more the merrier, right?” 

“Great! I’ll tell them at lunch. Well, I have to go to class, Paul. I’ll see you at three!”

“I-I can walk you!”

“Thanks, but I’m good,” El replied with a smile. “I know the way.” She bounced off to her English class, heart leaping in excitement to tell the others at lunch that they were all going to a party.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Are you going to tell her or should I?” Will looked up from his locker that afternoon to see his and El’s newest companion, Leslie, giving him a concerned look through her caked on black mascara. He was cool with Leslie at their table. She was quirky and smart and kind of funny. But the two of them never really spoke exclusively. They were just kind of thrust together.

“What?” Will asked. Leslie turned to Will, then around to everyone else, then back at Will, lowering her voice.

“This party? You don’t find it a little weird? Paul McGoldenChild asked Hopper on a date and she didn’t even notice! She invited us to go with her.”

“So? If we’re there, it’s not a date. Problem solved,” Will replied, and it was true. Her asking if they could join her was the easiest way out of that problem. Will knew that El admired Paul for being such a normal kid and kind to her, but she didn’t have anything that resembled actual feelings for him. Her room was a Mike shrine. She took forever on her walkie every Friday and made Will wait impatiently in his room. This new development was no threat to anything.

“No, the problem is not solved. I mean, Paul’s an okay guy, but I don’t think that he gets that she doesn’t get what this is. Because she doesn’t. Not even at all.”

“Okay, but how is telling her going to help? She’ll freak out and not go to this party then and she’s really so excited about it; I’d hate to take that away from her. He’s just her tutor; she owes him nothing. He'll catch on. Besides, he can have any girl he wants. I doubt he'll hold out for one who isn't interested.”

“No, but think about it,” Leslie persisted, leaning in closer to Will and lowering her voice slightly. “You’re captain of the football team. You’re surrounded by girls who are fake and silly and stupid to get your attention. You meet a girl like Jane, who is beautiful and doesn’t even know it, and she has no interest in your tactics.”

“Oh,” Will replied, suddenly putting two and two together.

“Yes. Oh. Very oh. Ambitious guys like him love a challenge, and she’s the ultimate one! This is bad, Will. I mean, he can’t fake that he’s just her nice tutor forever. It’d be kind of like you not telling anyone that you like boys.” 

At that, Will raised his eyebrows and looked up, alarmed. He wanted to be mad at this girl – this goth, freakish, overly made up, brazen girl that presumed too much. He wanted to tell her she didn’t know what she was talking about and to mind her own damn business because that obviously wasn’t true.

But it was.

it was and a part of hearing it felt good.

Still, he’d never said that to anyone and couldn’t form a response.

“No, it’s cool,” Leslie continued. “My uncle is gay, you know. Awesome guy. He’s been with his boyfriend for about fifteen years and they’re way happier than most straight couples who hate each other. In fact, I seriously wish I were a lesbian, but, hey, life’s not that good to me and I have to like your stupid gender. I hope you’re prepared for the crap you’ll have to deal with.”

“Just…I mean, I…”

“I’m sorry; I just call it like I see it and…well, you’re pretty obvious,” Leslie continued. “You have a thing for Hopper’s man, don’t you? That Mike guy she’s always talking about.”

That was it.

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“You don’t even know me!” Will retorted, trying to avoid her black framed gaze. “I mean…who are you to assume…”

“Sorry, too far, I’ll stop,” Leslie continued. “Look, I don’t mean to be a bitch here, I’m just saying…people have to be who they are. It’s all we’ve got, right?”

“What about you?” Will demanded, eager to change the subject in any way possible. “All this black makeup stuff going on, is that who you are?” Leslie gave him a light smile, which was kind of adorable ironically since she was designed to look anything but adorable.

“I like my exterior to match my black little soul. This is very real.” At that, Will couldn’t help but let a small smile show. “Ah, I saw that, Byers. You can try to hate me, but you’ll find I’m way too annoyingly likable. Okay, I’ll stop my psychoanalysis of you for a moment. Back to Hopper. “

“El?”

“El…that’s like the millionth time you’ve called her that. Why the hell do you call her that?” Will tried to avoid her gaze again. He kept slipping up at lunch, and Leslie seemed to notice but she never asked. He had to come up with something.

“It’s just…an inside joke I have. It’s a long story. I’ve called her that so long I can’t get out of it. We all do. Mike, Lucas, Dustin…”

“You all call her El? You people are freakin’ weird.” At that, Will started laughing and rolling his eyes.

“I’M weird?”

“Yup. Didn’t say I wasn’t; just said you were. Okay…back to Jane.”

“Just…let the party happen,” Will continued. “A guy like Paul is going to see how completely clueless El is to him and he’ll give up. The whole hard to get thing can’t be interesting for too long when you’ve got his options, can it?” Leslie grinned at him knowingly. “What?”

“You like him too. Why are you always after Hopper's men, huh?” Will couldn't help but smile. There was something about Leslie - as intimidating as she tried to make herself look - that made him feel uncharacteristically safe being honest about this. And it was freeing in a way that he'd never felt. Still, she _was_ being a wise ass about it, so it only felt natural to tell her to...

“Shut up.”

_________________________________________________________________________________

Joyce wasn’t accustomed to hearing the phone ring in the middle of the night. She felt very lucky that she fell asleep in the living room of her apartment watching television while Will and El were each in their respective bedrooms. For a moment, she feared it was Jonathan at college. He wasn’t a party guy but, hey, it was college. She told him to call her at an hour of the night if he needed something.

“Hello?” she asked nervously. 

“Joyce! Joyce it’s me.”

Murray.

At one in the morning.

“Murray, do you know what time it is?”

“One, two AM? Anyway, it doesn’t matter…”

“YES it does, Murray! I have a son in college and I don’t need a heart attack that he’s at a hospital somewhere or lost or…”

“ENOUGH about the damn children and listen!” Murray exclaimed, his voice wild with what sounded like either excitement or fear or both. “My contact in Russia, he just called me. Told me about the buzz he’s heard among the guards. There’s a prisoner missing. An AMERICAN prisoner.”

American prisoner?

Did that mean…

“Are you saying that Hop is…”

“Shhh! We can’t talk here, we have to meet and go through logistics, but, yes, it’s very possible that it is him. I do know by word of mouth that there are a number of US troops working undercover to try to sneak out American prisoners of war. To find more information about what the they’re doing over there. Hopper is a veteran; he knows people. I’m sure that if the right contacts found out he was there they’d do what they can to get him out.”

Hope flooded through Joyce, but caution was a strong dam and it wasn’t going to let that hope get too far.

“Okay, Murray. Tomorrow. We’ll see if we can piece this together.”

“Not a word to the kids, especially El,” Murray said. “We need to be as discreet as possible and you know she’d want to be involved if she knew about this.”

Joyce felt funny knowing that there was a possibility Hopper was out there without telling El about it. She felt El deserved to know about it more than anyone. Still, the part of her that she knew Hop would echo enthusiastically remembered what El looked like when they found her after the days of hell the kids spent fighting this monster on their own. She didn’t want to see El hurt like that again. Hopper would have wanted her safe and she would keep it that way.

“Not a word, Murray.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“So that confirms it, sir,” Officer Banks said to his superior, after playing a series of tapped phone calls recorded from the Byers line in Illinois. “Officer Callahan has succeeded and managed to gather Officer Hopper from his placement in the Russian prison. If they get back to base in Ukraine safely, they should be expected to return here in the next several days.”

“And Officer Callahan has thoroughly convinced Officer Hopper that it is to get him home?” asked a slick, smooth, silky voice in return.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Has any rumor ensued regarding what he has seen before he was taken?”

“No, sir. He was said to explore the other world and tried to get through an opening in the gate through the use of their trial technology, but has repeatedly failed in this mission.”

There was a hesitation. Officer Banks looked at his superior pacing. His hand swept over his face in frustration, brushing against scars that now covered the surface of his cheekbones. Scars from the monster in a world he was eager to gain sole understanding of, and which he didn’t wish to share with the Russians like so many of his other scientific feats. This was his. This was his alone. When other people took what was his, they ruined it.

They ruined HER.

But not for long. He’d get her back.

“Have there been any transmissions from the girl?”

“Chatting with Mr. Michael Wheeler. She’s improving in math, sir.”

“Anything _relevant,_ Officer Banks?”

“No sir. It was typical adolescent discourse.” His superior sighed, looking through a series of drawings in front of him in his quiet, desolate lab, so much less sophisticated, open and available for expansion of his ideas than his original one.

“She was designed to be the greatest weapon the US government has ever seen and now she’s talking with some completely unimpressive high school boy about improving in remedial math. Such a disappointment.”

“And a Halloween party, sir.”

“That’s…honestly, Officer Banks, do you really think I’m interested in trite youth rituals right now? The important thing is to get Chief Hopper here so that she can sense him again. When he’s close enough, she will. Because if it’s been a month since her last vision, she’s due to have more. And seeing how deeply she yearns for him, she’ll find him. And then when she’s here – when she’s back again – she’ll go back to doing what she was meant to do. Get us ahead in a quest for advanced understandings of worlds beyond our own and destroy the THING that turned me into THIS.” Dr. Martin Brenner stepped into the light that highlighted his features that were mutilated and scarred from his run in with the monster years ago. The night she – Eleven, his greatest weapon – disappeared. Officer Banks had a pretty strong stomach, but even he found it difficult to look at him in the face anymore.

“Yes, sir. I’ll continue to listen to frequencies. If anything changes, you’ll be first to know.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone for reading and reviewing. Your comments give me life! This chapter takes a bit of a different approach; it bounces back and forth from Hawkins to Illinois as the party members in either location go to a Halloween party and chaos ensues. Hope you enjoy it! REMINDER AGAIN: El's grammatical errors were intentional.

_10/29/86_

_Dear Mike,_

_Thanks for beeing so nice about my test. I am tryeing my best and it feels really good to see my grades get bigger. Math is hard the most but also sometimes it is hard in writeing because my teacher puts red marks all over what I write and then it looks like I spilled tomato sauce on it. Mrs. Leeopolde says that is a silime. That is when you compare to things that are not the same useing like or as. Your eyes nice as Eggos. How is that?_

_I am sorry about Holly but maybe she is just sad or school is hard. I no how that feels. Just be nice to her Mike. Sometimes when you are mad you can forget to be nice and she is a littel girl and needs some one to be nice to her. I hope I did not hurt your feelings by sayeing that, but friends dont lie. I no you are nice but it is hard to be nice wen you are mad and I get that like when I dumpd your ass when I was mad._

_I am super sorry but I can not go on the walkee on Friday but it is also really exiting because Will and Leslee and me will go to a partey. Paul asked if I wanted to go and I said Will and Leslee can come and he said okay. I am sooooo excited because I never went to one. It is for Halowen so I have to go after school and get a costum. I am very exited because I have never had a costume for Halloween before. Last year I was not going to because Will did not want to trick or treet and that was all. You should go to your party to. So if you can please ask Dustin if you can use Seree Bro the next day. If not we can talk next Friday. I hope you can talk Satuday._

_It is only some more weeks until you come visit. I cant wait to see you and hug you and kiss you again. I miss you so much and I love you!_

_Love,_

_El._

Mike, his fingers nervously fidgeting with his pen, waited patiently for Max to finish reading El’s letter at study hall. While ordinarily he would never show their letters to anyone unless there was an issue with El’s safety that concerned him, the fact was that El’s news about Paul was starting to get to him and he needed someone to stop him. Max would certainly put him in his place, and that was exactly what he needed.

Only she didn’t seem annoyed or angry at him this time, which was weird, because while they were friends, Max was the kind of friend who would always call him on his shit. This time, though, she seemed a little more patient. She looked up at Mike sympathetically.

“Mike…I’m seriously impressed.”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise.

Impressed? 

In the years they’ve been sort-of-friends, Max had never once been impressed with him.

“You’re what? Max, aren’t you going to tell me I’m being a jealous idiot and I’ve got nothing to worry about, and that she deserves to go out and have a good time and only a total chauvinistic control freak would want to stop her or feel upset about that?”

“Exactly! All of that is true, but you KNOW it this time and that is SUPER impressive!” Max said, giving him back his letter with a smile. Mike, still confused, decided to press further.

“So…I’m not being an idiot?”

“Oh, no, you totally are,” Max continued. She took one look at his irritated face and laughed. “Lighten up, will you? Why do you always have to have such an enormous stick up your ass, Mike?”

“Sorry, I’m a LITTLE stressed here!”

“Of course you are,” Max drly replied. “Look…it sucks to say, and I don’t mean to be insensitive here, but do you think it’s fair to ask El to sit around in her room and wait to talk to you on her walkie? She grew up with nothing…”

“I know,” Mike said sadly, feeling more ashamed of himself as Max's true words weighed down on him.

“Yeah, and in the past three years she found you and friends and a dad and lost all of it, so now she’s finally got a good thing going and a friend…”

“He doesn’t want to just be her friend, though!” Mike asserted. Max rolled her eyes.

“How do you know that?” Mike felt his entire body almost shake with frustration. This was obvious beyond anything. Max had to know where he was coming from, and yet she played stupid like she had no idea.

“LOOK at her, Max!” Max gazed at him, unfazed.

“Yeah?”

“She’s beautiful!” Max shrugged, still seemingly not shocked by his point.

“Duh. So?”

“So why would some older guy want to take a pretty girl like her to some party unless he had an interest in her? I mean, he’s a popular football player. He could invite ANYONE.”

“Maybe he was being nice,” Max said matter-of-factly. “Maybe he saw that she was new to school and didn’t know anybody so he acted like a decent human being and tried to show her some hospitality. Besides, he’s cool with her bringing Will and Leslie so he can’t be so set on getting her alone.” 

That point lifted a small weight off Mike’s shoulders. Yes. Will and Leslie would be there. It’s not a romantic date to bring two of your friends along, is it?

“Yeah, that’s true,” Mike said.

“Exactly! Besides, she’s totally into you for some strange reason and I have to hear about you five thousand times in every letter she sends me, which makes me want to puke…”

“Hey!”

“So I doubt Paul over there stands a chance unless he’s a shape shifter and can turn into you.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, smiling. “Yeah, that’s true.”

“And…well, you know…the other thing.”

Uh oh. 

Mike didn’t like the sound of another thing.

“What other thing?” Max hesitated, breathed in deeply, and looked at Mike with caution and concern he wasn’t used to seeing on her face. “MAX! What other thing?”

“Okay,” Max began slowly. “Don’t hate me for saying this, but…realistically speaking…you guys are only 15 and you’re each other’s first boyfriend and girlfriend. And miles and miles away from each other…”

“What are you saying?”

“Well, statistically, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be the only person she’ll EVER be interested in.”

That point stabbed Mike’s heart like a dagger. He expected that Max would be straight with him but never thought she’d vocalize the fear that had plagued him from the minute that he found out the girl he adored would be moving to Illinois. 

“You don’t really think that, do you?” Mike asked. Max turned suddenly red; this was not going as she planned.

“Look…okay, honestly, at this point, no, I don’t, because, like I said, she’s crazy for you, but the thing is…I’m just saying, you know, as your friend, that you have to mentally prepare myself for the possibility that there may be other guys.”

“I have no desire to prepare myself for that possibility,” Mike asserted, thrusting his pen onto the table in frustration. “What’s the point in all of this…in calling, in writing, in clinging on to this hope if she’s just going to get together with another guy? She wouldn’t…I mean, she’d stop calling…”

A lump in his throat expanded, almost strangling him.

She wasn’t calling this Friday.

She was going out with Paul.

“She said she was going to call you Saturday and you know Dustin will let you use the radio so don’t freak out!” Max advised him.

“Don’t freak out? You fed me the idea that El may want to date other guys and I’m not supposed to freak out?”

“Well, that was pretty dumb of me, because obviously you can’t handle it. Look, I’m sorry…that’s not to say it’s happening now, I’m just saying that if she feels she wants the chance to explore something new, you have two options. You can be mad about it…or you can, you know, let nature take its course. Because if it’s meant to be it’ll happen, and isn’t it better that she knows for sure than she spends her life wondering? And you too. You don’t think you’ll ever be interested in anyone else?”

“No,” Mike said, almost immediately. “No chance. She’s…” He took a deep breath, looked down at his trembling fingers, and wondered if he should say this to Max. He looked back up. Her blue eyes weren’t judging him; they were concerned. She looked authentically worried about him. That was unusual. “She’s everything to me, Max. She’s the only person I want to be with and the thought of her with someone else…it hurts. It hurts so badly.”

“I know,” Max told him, and Mike seemed really surprised. She let out a laugh. “Yeah, I know Lucas and I can’t hold a candle to how intense you and El are, but why do you think I keep coming back after all of our break ups? The idea of anyone else picking up my stalker? It sucks.” The two exchanged a look of understanding and relief at being able to express what plagued them each internally for so long when Max continued. “Just..I don’t mean to be a bitch, Mike. I honestly just don’t want to see either of you hurt. I’m sure this party is just going to be a night out and that’s all. You two will be sucking face on Thanksgiving before you know it.” 

Mike gave Max a smile; a rare smile these days since so much of his happiness was miles and miles away from him. “Thanks, Max.”

“No problem. And speaking of parties, maybe we can go to one too? Why not?”

“No!” Mike exclaimed. “You know I don’t do that stuff. I thought we decided on having a horror movie and candy marathon with Lucas and Dustin.”

“No, that was your suggestion. Lucas and Dustin want to go to the party. Majority rules. You could stay home by yourself.” Mike sighed deeply. He definitely didn’t want to do that. And while a party wasn’t his idea of a good time, it sure beat sitting at home and feeling sorry for himself wondering what Paul was up to.

“Party it is.”

______________________________________________________________________

“Almost done…there! Have a look!” El looked in the mirror of her bedroom impressed at the makeup that Leslie just applied. She was dressed as a devil, in a pretty red dress and with glittery red horns above her head. Leslie put some makeup on her to finish the look. She made her eyelids darker with shadowy eyeshadow and black eyeliner, and painted her lips red with shiny lipstick. El had to say she liked it; she really felt like she looked pretty, and she didn’t feel that way too often. She smiled at Leslie, dressed as a witch, a simple black dress, black hat, her dark makeup looking like it always did.

“I like it,” El said, smiling. “Is…is this okay for the party?”

“You look hot, El,” Leslie told her. “It’s too bad your Mikey isn’t going. He’d die looking at you.” El smiled, although a reminder of Mike’s absence still made her feel pretty sad. She missed talking to him like she did every other week.

“Hey Will, you ready?” Leslie called into the hallway. “We’re going to head over to the party soon; we’re already late.”

“Fifteen minutes is fashionably late in all those college movies and stuff,” Will said as he walked in, wearing a prisoner’s outfit. It looked like black and white pajamas. El looked at it and grinned.

“Like a zebra,” she said. Will rolled his eyes, but managed a laugh.

“I’m a PRISONER, El, and it’s so comfortable that it’s worth you thinking I’m a zebra.” El smiled in return, and was grateful that after a year of quiet awkwardness and sadness, that Will seemed to actually be excited to get out of the house and do something. 

“Alright, come on, guys, let’s go!” Leslie called, and grabbed the two by the arms. They were almost out of the house when Joyce asked to take a few pictures. Will moaned, embarrassed, but El couldn’t help but feel happy about it. Nobody ever took her picture like a Mom before. It made her feel safe and comfortable. Especially now that she was starting to feel a little nervous. She’d never been to a party before. What were you supposed to do at one?

The party was at a house within walking distance, so the three of them walked and passed trick or treaters on their way to the party. A look of sadness overcame Will as groups of kids ran past them, and El wondered if he missed it. If he missed being with his friends and trading candy instead of being away from them and off to a party with a group of kids who usually terrorized him. The further along they walked, though, the more comfortable he seemed. 

They could hear noise from the party from far away. They were a few houses down when they saw people standing outside. 

“Wow,” Will said, looking a little intimidated. “That’s…I’ve never been to anything like that before. You, Leslie?”

“Nope,” Leslie replied. “Barely been out of my bedroom before. But, hey, we’ll stick together and give it a shot, right Hopper?”

El looked nervously at the crowd, the noise and the number of people suddenly heightening her anxiety. She’d never been around this many people before, and while she was excited earlier, she felt herself start to panic. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t go.”

“Yeah, maybe not. Want to grab some candy from a house that doesn’t mind we’re old and watch the Exorcist?” Will asked.

“Paul is your tutor and he invited you,” Leslie said. “Let’s just go, make an entrance, see how it is and get out of there.”

El nodded; that was a good point. She couldn’t be rude, not after Paul was nice enough to invite them.

So they drew closer to the loud music, holding each other closer as they approached an enormous, fancy, well-manicured home. El gazed at in in awe. She grew up in a lab and a small cabin; other than the Wheeler home she had never seen anything close to as lovely as this, but this house made the Wheeler home look like her cabin in comparison. There were crowds of people scattered around the perfectly neat, green lawn, talking, holding cups, smoking cigarettes like Hop used to…

Hop…

She did what she usually did when she thought of him; she closed her eyes, counted to ten, and decided to stop. Thinking about Hop hurt.

“El? You okay?”

“Ugh, what IS El?” Leslie asked, frustrated, but El shook her head and forced a smile.

“I-I’m fine.”

“Jane!” A friendly voice grew louder as she saw Paul’s form approach them. Paul, dressed as Superman, approached the three of them, but only seemed to attend to El. He got closer, and extended his arms. El wasn’t sure if she was right about this, but she assumed it was to give her a hug. Was she supposed to give one back? Could you do that to your tutor? She wasn’t sure. She just stood there, arms at her side, as he firmly placed his arms around her.

Very tightly.

Mike was very thin; his hugs were warm and sweet, but they weren’t all enveloping and strong like this one. It felt different. It felt NICE, but it wasn’t Mike. It made her feel funny inside. Soon those arms left her as Paul turned to the others, smiling his perfectly white smile.

“Oh, sorry, how rude of me…Leslie, Will, right?”

“Yeah. We've been in band together for three semesters, so we’ve met,” Leslie brazenly responded, forcing a smile. Paul, though, ever a gentleman, gave her a doofy grin that she couldn’t help but return.

“Right! I’m SO sorry, Leslie! I couldn’t recognize you in the costume!”

El was about to say that she looked like she usually does, only in a witch dress, but thought that would be one of those times Joyce talked about where the truth isn’t nice (like when she told Joyce that her dress made her look like she was having a baby and Joyce wasn’t too happy), so she kept it to herself.

“And…Will, nice to meet you! You’re in my friend Mary’s art class. She says you’re really good.”

El smiled widely at Will, knowing how much such a compliment would mean to him. Will was also beaming, but trying to play it cool.

“That’s really nice of you…of her, thanks!” Will said. El looked at him closely and also noticed something weird about his expression. His eyes were shining. He looked at Paul like Mike looked at her. That was odd. 

“Yeah, well, not my house, but, hell, friends all take care of each other’s houses, so welcome! Come in, guys! Have a drink!”

Will, El and Leslie exchanged awkward looks. El knew that Hopper used to have drinks that he called “grown up” drinks but she, of course, was forbidden from having any. She didn’t know if it was a good idea, because when Hop had those drinks he always acted silly and she didn’t want to act that way. Especially with Mike so far away. 

They followed Paul in, and she saw that he greeted just about everyone. He was probably the most popular boy in their high school, and he invited HER to this party. How weird.

They got to a kitchen where there were cups and drinks scattered all over the place. Paul turned around.

“What’ll you have?”

“Beer,” Leslie said without a second thought, and El was surprised that her friend was much cooler about the whole thing than she was. Paul poured Leslie a drink. She could at least depend on Will to resist peer pressure, right?

“Whatever’s in the bowl, I guess,” Will replied, looking at an enormous bowl of red liquid with floating ice cubes. El guessed there was another grown up drink in there. She looked cautiously at Will, wondering if he should do this, because he’d never done anything like that before, but he eagerly took one from Paul.

El’s mind went to Mike, sitting at home and watching old horror movies. He would probably worry about her. They hadn’t spoken at all today.

“Jane? What’ll you have?”

“Just a Coke,” El replied, trying to stay cool and not sound weird. 

“Nerd,” Leslie teased, taking a long sip of her drink, but El laughed it off. It didn’t matter if anyone thought she was a nerd; she was here to have fun at the party and she didn’t want to wake up vomiting like Hop did last New Year’s Day when he had too many drinks.

“That’s fine, I applaud responsibility,” Paul said, pouring her a Coke and handing it to her with a smile. Then he picked up his own drink, and lifted up his cup. “Happy Halloween, guys!”

Everyone else picked up their cups, and El remembered this ritual from the Wheeler house on Christmas. She lifted her glass and toasted.

“Happy Halloween!”

________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Mike, could you TRY having a good time?” Mike, dressed in a green long sleeved tee and jeans, the only one without a costume for Max’s friend’s party, gave Lucas a look of bored disapproval.

“It’s loud. It’s crowded. There’s crappy music playing. El’s not here. Why should I have a good time?”

“Because it’s a party!” Lucas said. “We are NEVER invited to one! Can you loosen up maybe a little?”

“Look, you and Max in your matching costumes in my face? Really not helping,” Mike replied, looking in disgust at Lucas’s Clyde costume, which matched Max’s Bonnie. Gaten’s lame ET costume provided a good conversation piece, at least, but their couple look did nothing but make him miss El, who was off with Paul.

“Hey, come on, if El were here…”

“El’s NOT here!” Mike shouted, the weight of his words hitting him harder than he thought. “I haven’t seen her in MONTHS and TODAY was our phone day, but she’s off with football superstar PAUL!”

“MICHAEL WHEELER!” Mike was startled when Max stumbled over to them, unable to maintain balance. She knocked into him, almost over to the ground, and the smell of something in his dad’s whiskey glass on Fridays and holidays came drifting directly into his face.

“Max, you’re drunk!” Mike exclaimed, looking alarmed. He turned to Lucas, looking for someone to be equally concerned, but Lucas found the whole thing amusing. “Lucas, she’s drunk!”

“Yeah…I know, but she’ll be okay!”

“How much did you drink?” Mike asked her, looking concerned. Max started laughing loudly, wrapping an arm tightly around him.

“Mike is CONCERNED for me! Mike Wheeler who has hated me since day ONE…”

“I don’t hate you!” Mike insisted, looking to Lucas for some support, but he suspected Lucas may have had a drink or two as well, because his eyes were glossing over and he had no reaction to Max’s volume or lack of balance. 

“Ohhh yes you do, but it’s okay, because I love you. I do! You’re my El’s boyfriend and you make her happy and you’re going to marry her someday and have my nieces and nephews, so I LOVE you!”

“What the hell did she DRINK, Lucas?” Mike asked, turning to Lucas and demanding that he get a hold of himself. Lucas, however, was preoccupied, as Max wrapped her arms around him and started getting closer to him than she had ever allowed any of the boys see her get before.

“And you…you stalker, I love you even though you suck.”

“I don’t suck. You know I’m totally tubular,” Lucas said softly back, leaning in closely and pressing his forehead to hers. Suddenly Mike felt as though his dinner was about to come rushing back up quickly. Is this what he and El looked like to everyone else?

“No, that’s why I don’t break up with you. I need my stalker all to myself.”

“Dustin!” Mike called, walking away as Lucas and Max started kissing with enough enthusiasm and gusto to power an electrical circuit. He walked the perimeter of the room, looking frantically, when he knocked into a figure about his size in an ET costume.

“Mike, we’ve got to get the hell out of here,” Dustin said. “Some senior in my choir class who’s drunk as a skunk just invited me to go to France with her this weekend. If Suzie finds out about this…”

“Yeah, well, we have a problem,” Mike told him. “There’s no way Max can ride her bike back because I guarantee she’s drunker than whoever that choir girl is.”

“Max is drunk?” Dustin asked, looking partially concerned and also amused.

“She is like a comedy sketch right now only she looks about an hour away from puking her guts out. We’ve got to get her home.” Dustin sighed deeply and then his eyes lit up.

“I know who to call.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________

El excused herself for a bathroom break as Leslie and Will became far more comfortable and started talking to some of the other party guests. The liquid in their cups seemed to calm them, although El was glad to see they were both pacing themselves far more than Hop ever did. The party was pretty good. Paul was a popular guy, but he did come around periodically to ask her how she was enjoying the party. He smiled a lot. Those teeth were way too white.

As she finished washing her hands, she noticed there were two doors in the bathroom. Which one did she come in from? She honestly didn’t remember. She came up so quickly and needed a breather so badly that she wasn’t paying attention. She trusted her gut and turned to the right, exiting out that way. 

This wasn’t the right door. She was in an empty bedroom. A beautiful bedroom. There was an enormous bed; what she remembered Hop calling king-size when they looked for different beds for her bedroom. It had a really big backboard; gold and shiny. There were massive dressers on either side full of picture frames, and she recognized the girl in all the pictures from school. Marcy Paul, the one throwing the party. She was one of the popular cheerleaders. She was Paul’s friend. She heard that she and Paul dated once. That’s what Leslie said. She wondered why they broke up. Did he lie like Mike did? Maybe they still secretly liked each other.

She started taking a closer look at some of the pictures on the dresser when the door opened. She heard shouts and stood frozen to the spot.

“You’re an ASSHOLE, Tony! Honestly, with me standing right there? Do you even care that I can SEE you flirting with Cindy Leston?”

“Well you’re one to talk. How many members of the basketball team have you been screwing since we’ve been together?”

“Screw you!” El, standing in the shadows, watched as Lisa threw a drink in Tony’s direction and stormed out of the room. She wanted to leave the room, too, but it didn’t’ seem like the right time to do it. 

“You watch, Lis! You’ll come crawling back like you always do!” He was shouting some other things in the hallway when El thought she’d casually start heading back in the direction of the bathroom. However, just as she was about to reach for the door, she felt a figure collide into her side and walk right in front of her.

“Well, lookie what we have here.”

________________________________________________________________________________

“I had to make up a convincing emergency to Keith to leave the movies and pick up your lush asses. I hope you appreciate this,” Steve lectured as Lucas and Max were practically passed out in his back seat. Mike sat in the corner alongside them, while Dustin rode alongside Steve. Mike was very grateful he came; one more drink and Max would be on the floor.

“Hey, we did the responsible thing and called an adult,” Gaten told him. “And only two of us are drunk.”

“Yeah, damn…about that,” Steve continued. “Stick to beer or something that at least smells good. You guys smell like bottles my parents have had for twenty years. What the hell did you drink?”

“Some brown stuff in the liquor cabinet,” Max replied, her voice slurred and light.

“Well, that sounds promising,” Steve commented.

“Oh, please, don’t play saint. I know you and Nancy have been to parties like that,” Mike asserted. He had no desire to go to this party in the first place and wasn’t in the mood to be lectured.

“Yes, I did, but I paced myself. Look, I think there’s a popcorn bucket out there from when I brought some home to my mom…if you have to puke just go in there.”

Mike breathed in deeply, shuddering at the thought that either Max or Lucas would puke in front of him. He looked out the window dreamily and wondered where El was. What was she doing? Was she okay? Was she having fun?

_______________________________________________________________________

“Excuse me. I have to go meet my friends,” El told Tony. She was in no mood to deal with someone who would talk to his own girlfriend that way.

“But where’s the fun in that?” Tony asked, his large hands reaching for her waist and pulling her closer to him. If she were the old El – the El with powers – she would have knocked him backwards and through a wall, but this El had no powers and could only feel terribly nauseous as she struggled to wiggle free from his grip.

“Get off me!” El shouted, but Tony, his breath reeking of stale beer, leaned in close to her ear and laughed.

“Damn, you make a pretty devil,” he said, and she didn’t like his voice. It was low and growly; creepy like Billy’s right before she was about to die and he told her to stay very still. Before she thought of a way to win over his sympathies.

Winning over his sympathies…

“You have a girlfriend,” El reminded him. “You had a fight but it’ll be okay…”

“Forget that bitch,” his voice answered forcefully, as he pulled her closer to him more tightly. “You…you weirdo, as crazy as you are, you’re so damn cute…I’ve been wanting to get you on your own for weeks now. I bet you’ve been curious about me, too.”

“No I’m not!” El exclaimed, moving her hands to his chest and trying to shove him away from her, but it only resulted in a laugh and him leaning in his mouth to her neck. She felt his sloppy, wet lips there, kissing her the way that only Mike was supposed to. A cry escaped from her throat. “STOP!” she shouted, her voice flooding with tears. “I…I don’t want…”

“Come on, I’m just having a little fun…”

“GET THE HELL OFF OF HER, TONY!” A loud shout echoed from the other side of the room, where El turned around and saw Paul. Only he didn’t look like Paul; white teeth, shiny eyes, radiating with happiness. He was angry. He came over to Tony and tried to get him off of El, but Tony was faster, releasing El for a quick moment and very rapidly extending his fist behind his back…

…letting it land right on Paul’s mouth.

Paul fell backwards, moaning in pain.

“Paul!” El shouted, trying to run over to him, but Tony grabbed El, forced her away from Paul and against the wall behind him. He grabbed her wrists tightly and held both her arms over her head with one hand while her his other landed behind her back on her waist.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Tony told her, leaning his body into hers in a way that made her heart beat rapidly. “You’re going to hang out and have some fun with me.”

“I don’t want to!” El shouted, tears falling from her face as she tried desperately to free herself from him. “I told you, I have a boyfriend!”

“Yeah, the asshole in that picture in your locker? That ugly little freak? If he were now I’d kick his scrawny ass right before I...

But El never found out what he would do next, because as soon as the word “freak” exited Tony’s mouth, something came over El. Something she hadn’t felt in over a year. And before she could even think about what was happening, she flicked her head forward with a jerk and Tony’s body was flung across the room like a rag doll where it crashed hard into the wall opposite, hitting it and landing like a heap on the floor.

It wasn’t long before footsteps echoed in the hallway. People were coming to see what the noise was.

Everything went in slow motion.

El felt a trickle of blood fall rapidly down her nose and meet her lip…

___________________________________________________________________________________

“We have to get her in without Neil knowing she’s like this,” Lucas told the others cautiously. The effects of the alcohol that hit him were still there but not strong enough to forget how harsh Max’s stepfather could be. His eyes glossed over with concern.

“Okay, and how do we do that?” Mike asked. Steve groaned.

“You people are amateurs. Just let her in through the window on the side.”

“It’s CLOSED! HellOOO!” Max called from Lucas’s arms. 

“Well…what if we created a diversion and somebody walked in and opened it?” Dustin asked. Steve breathed in deeply.

“A diversion? What master plan have you got, Henderson?”

“Pretend you’re having a fight. Neil loves breaking up fights,” Max managed to say, her speech slurred and her balance off.

“Cool. I’ll fight Steve; he always loses!” Dustin happily suggested. Mike groaned.

“Honestly? Then what? We just walk into his house and open the window?”

“Yeah. We’d need someone so damn narrow and lanky that they wouldn’t even notice he’s there,” Dustin teased, looking at Mike with a wicked grin. Everyone else followed his gaze directly to Mike, trying to hide their amusement.

“Fine. I’m not THAT lanky, though,” Mike mumbled, and positioned himself near the bushes on the side of the house. Steve and Dustin stood in front shouting loudly.

“YOU TOOK MY WALLET!”

“THAT’S MY WALLET, YOU IDIOT!”

“WE NEED THE POLICE! That’s what we need!”

Mike rolled his eyes. This was the worst performance he’d ever seen in his life. No way could Max’s stepfather fall for this nonsense. He was an asshole, but not an idiot.

In a few moments, though, he was proven wrong. A man – a tall, intimidating looking man with a forced sense of calm walked outside the house.

“Hey, hey, fellas, what’s going on?”

With that, Mike quickly moved while Neil’s back was turned. He walked into the house and peeked around to see if Max’s mom was anywhere. She must have been in the bedroom, where a dim light was still on and he heard distant sounds of the bed creaking. He found Max’s room alongside the master bedroom and slowly, silently made his way in there. He went over to the window, where he reached over and opened it quietly. Lucas was with Max on the other side, lifting her up. She grabbed the base of the windowsill but couldn’t move.

“Mike! Help!” 

“What?” Mike asked, feeling like this had gone way farther than it should have.

“Just lift her up,” Lucas said. “I can’t get her up from this angle.”

“Lift her up? I don’t know if I can,” Mike honestly said, as lifting wasn’t his strong suit.

“You calling me FAT, Wheeler?” Max bellowed. Mike hushed for her to shut up and grabbed her arms, managing to lift her up. She got to the floor and almost fell, but he supported her weight, hoping to avoid the huge thud of gravity thrusting Max to the ground full force, and moved her toward the bed.

“Hey, watch it, Wheeler. I’m only interested in Stalker,” Max slurred. Mike stood up now that Max was lying down and her eyelids were drooping, then went back to the window to help Lucas in. 

“You moving in on my girl, Mike?” Lucas joked. Mike rolled his eyes and shook his head, ready to get out of the house and back to his room where he could at least read a few of El’s letters and feel better. 

Until, that is, Max let out another drunken fact.

“Just so you guys know, I went to the Steelworks,” she blurted out, looking at both Lucas and Mike through closing eyes. “By myself.” Her eyes closed and her head fell on the pillow.

_______________________________________________________________________

Before footsteps could come any closer, El hurried toward the bathroom, only she wasn’t alone. Paul’s footsteps were right behind her and they closed the door behind them both.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking at her with concern. “Your nose! Did…did he do something to your nose?” El shook her head, tears falling from her eyes, not knowing how to answer that question. It felt gross – wrong – to have someone’s hands and lips on her that didn’t belong to Mike. Would this make Mike mad at her? What if he didn’t speak to her again?

“No, it’s…it’s a long story…”

“What happened? How did he fly across the room like that?” More tears falling, El tried to breathe in deeply and relax, but she couldn’t. Paul didn’t know about her powers; nobody at school did. She wasn’t supposed to have them anymore and she certainly didn’t expect this.

“I have to go,” she said. “I…I promise I’ll explain everything Paul, but…”

“Jane…”

“I have to go!” El repeated, and she hurried out through the other bathroom door and ran downstairs. The crowd downstairs broke because of all of the people who ran upstairs to see what the noise was. Leslie and Will, thankfully, didn’t join the crowd and were seated on comfortable spots in the living room where she left them ten minutes earlier. 

Will took one look at her nose and drew in a deep breath.

“Leslie,” he said. “We…we have to leave.”

______________________________________________________________________________

“The steelworks?” Lucas repeated, trying not to be too loud, but his anger getting the better of him. “Max – Max wake up! I told you not to go to the damn steelworks, didn’t I? It could be dangerous even if…”

“Not going to let Billy die in vain,” Max mumbled, half awake. Lucas exchanged a frustrated look with Mike and then turned back to her.

“What about you?” Lucas continued. “Do you honestly think that you’re going to single handedly go to the Steelworks and fight something if it is there? You could have been killed!”

“I can fight!” Max insisted, turning on her side and groaning, while Mike’s mind was turning. Max COULD have been killed at the Steelworks. Even if there were no monsters there anymore, It was old and dilapidating. All it would take would be a loose beam falling on her.

“Max, no you can’t! It’s not because you’re weak or a girl – it’s because El fought that thing last year and lost her powers doing it! What would it do to you?”

Mike’s heart started to hurt thinking about it; how El lost her powers, was taken away from him after Billy knocked him out, how for several moments he had no idea where she was and feared he’d find her dead at the hands of the monster…

“You should know I found something,” Max interrupted. “No monsters but…it’s there. On the dresser.”

Mike and Lucas looked at one another then quickly walked over to the dresser. There, slightly charred and misshapen, was a watch. Mike had seen that watch before. He knew where it came from.

“Hopper.”

__________________________________________________________________________________________

“Is someone PLEASE going to tell me what’s going on?” Leslie panted from behind El and Will, who were running ahead of her. They had made it two blocks beyond the party when El stopped, ready to pass out from exhaustion and strain. The blood was still dripping from her nose. She couldn’t remember the last time she had a nose bleed that severe. 

“They’re back,” El told Will. “I…I don’t know how but they’re back.”

“What’s back?” Leslie asked. “Hopper, did you have something to do with that thud?” 

“Yeah, did you?” Will asked. 

Tears still falling down El’s face, she nodded and looked from El to Will, both very confused. “Tony…I was leaving the bathroom and he…he grabbed me. Pulled me to him and wouldn’t let me go. I told him to stop and he wouldn’t. He started to…to kiss me on my neck. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t get him off.”

“That absolute shit!” Leslie shouted, while Will, speechless, stood and watched as white as a sheet. “Such a pervert I swear! You’re not the first, Hopper, he’s notorious for getting drunk and crossing boundaries.”

“What happened then?” Will asked. “I mean…did he…did he try to…”

“He came closer to me and said…said he would kick Mike’s ass…”

“He said WHAT?” Leslie asked, her face turning red in anger as Will’s was so pale he was practically transparent.

“And when he said that I got so…MAD I just…he flew. He flew across the room. I…I threw him.” There was uncomfortable silence and the three of them looked at each other in confusion. Leslie took a deep breath, turned from Will to El and back again, then spoke. 

“Are you trying to tell me that YOU THREW Tony – Tony DeMaggio – across the room? All, what, hundred pounds of you?”

“Ninety eight,” El corrected, wiping a tear from her face. “And yes. I did.” It got quiet again and Leslie looked at both of them before laughing; a loud, boisterous laugh.

“Hopper, you ARE a trip! For a second there I almost believed it! I mean, imagine for a second this little girl throwing that enormous meathead across a room…”

“She did,” Will continued. “There are things about El you should know.” He and El exchanged a look and El nodded, then turned back to Leslie.

“I’m not like other girls…”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! Thanks again for your readership and your comments! This chapter will focus on the immediate aftermath of all the events in the next chapter. Enjoy!

_11/1/86_

_Dear El,_

_I know we just spoke on the radio today, but I really had to write you again because I can’t help myself. When I found out what happened at that party, I won’t lie – I got really upset. And mad. I don’t think I’ve ever been that angry in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to hurt someone as much as I want to hurt Tony right now. But you know what hurts more? That you think I would be mad at you. And that’s not your fault, it’s mine. You were right in what you said about Holly. It didn’t hurt my feelings, but it stung a bit because it’s true. Sometimes when I’m mad, I forget to be nice. And it’s sad that you’d think that I would ever blame you for what Tony did. I would never blame you, El. It is NOT your fault. Some boys are like that – they think that girls are things and they can just touch them however they want, and that’s wrong. All the time. But it’s especially horrible when it happens to you. You’re such a good, kind, sweet girl. It makes me so angry that anyone would touch you in a way that you don’t like and make you feel bad. I hope I NEVER make you feel like that. I hope you know that. If I EVER make you feel bad, or uncomfortable, or upset, please promise you’ll tell me. Don’t worry about my feelings. Nothing hurts more than the idea that I could ever hurt you, so please don’t ever let me. Promise?_

_It’s really weird that your powers came back like that. Especially since, like you told me, you couldn’t use them again later. I wonder if there is a way to find out more about that. Would Dr. Owens know? He knows a lot about you; maybe he knows if there is a way to train it back into you. That’s if you want him to. I mean…that’s all I’ve got right now, unless you can think of someone or something else that can help you. Just pay close attention to it. If it happens again, compare how; maybe it comes up when you feel really scared? Is that possible? I hope not because I don’t want you to be scared._

_There was more that I wanted to tell you but I can’t yet. That may sound weird, and I promise I’m not lying – the thing is, it’s kind of a sensitive topic, meaning it could make you really upset. I don’t want to lie and pretend there isn’t something on my mind, but I don’t want to talk about this thing unless I know exactly what it is and what it means. Hopefully we’ll have answers by Friday and we can talk more then. Just know that it has nothing to do with us – with you and me. I don’t write this enough, and you always write it to me, but I love you. I love you a lot. More than anything or anyone else. And I’m trying to be the best person I can for you, because I don’t deserve you a lot of the time and I know that, but just trust me when I say that I will do my best to be as good as you deserve me to be._

_Thanksgiving is THIS MONTH and it can’t come soon enough. I miss you more than words could possibly say and I can’t wait to see you and give you the biggest hug I’ve ever given anyone._

_Love,_

_Mike_

El couldn’t stop reading Mike’s most recent letter, even if it made her cry. Even if the sight of Mike’s love for her in black and white, so rarely openly expressed, moved her beyond anything she could imagine.

Will begged Joyce to use the phone to call Mike for just two minutes to ask him to use Dustin’s radio that Saturday. Joyce, who appreciated this was a rare thing to ask, said she would let him before she headed to work. El had paced around her room nervously; what should she tell him? HOW could she tell him? Will came into her room and promised he wouldn’t intrude upon her personal time with Mike if she didn’t want him to, but thought it may be easier if he was there to help her get through it. He was equally helpful when they explained her story to Leslie the day before. Leslie took it surprisingly well. It took a while to get her to even believe it, but after seeing the look of fear and determination on each of their faces, she seemed to come around. Seemed to. Without El’s powers fully back, without her able to move so much as a crumpled-up piece of paper a centimeter forward, it wasn’t entirely convincing.

El was relieved not to relive the awful experience of the previous evening by explaining it to Mike alone, so having Will there to back her up was surely welcome. She nervously sat, her fingers trembling, as they heard Mike’s voice call from the radio.

“El? It’s Mike; do you copy?”

El picked up the radio, her voice shaking with fear.

“Mike?”

There was silence on the other end. Will reached over and grabbed El’s trembling hand, rubbing his thumb along it to soothe her a bit. El didn’t know Mike as long as he did. Mike was moody, but no way in a million years would he ever be angry at El for this.

“El? What’s wrong?” Mike asked, his pitch higher as it got when he was nervous. El picked up the radio and tried speaking, but tears started to fill her eyes. Will, without being prompted, grabbed the radio.

“Mike, it’s Will,” Will said. 

“Will?” Mike asked, now sounding practically frantic. “Will, what’s going on? Where’s El?”

“She’s here,” Will replied, squeezing El’s hand as tears started to flow down her face. “She’s here but…it's really hard for her to talk because...something happened yesterday.”

“At the party? What happened? Is she okay?”

“She’s okay,” Will continued. “It’s just…” El reached her hand over and took the radio from Will, finding the courage to speak to him. 

“At the party,” El started. “I went to the bathroom…and… and I left and Tony…he fought with Lisa and he…he tried…” 

“TONY did something? Did he touch you? Did he hurt you? What happened?” El looked at Will fearfully, the fury in Mike's voice eminent and seeping through every syllable he practically shouted. This wasn't making it easier.

“Mike,” Will continued. “Before I go on you have to promise me that you’ll try your best to stay calm. El is okay, I promise. It was just a hard night, and it will be even harder if you freak out right now.”

“I won’t freak out if you tell me what the hell happened!” Mike shouted. Will and El paused, exchanging uncomfortable looks. El’s eyes pleaded with Will to relieve her the task of explaining, and Will nodded his head.

“When El left the bathroom, Tony cornered her in one of the bedrooms and….held her there. He moved in to kiss her. Paul tried to stop him but Tony knocked him out cold. Then he grabbed her again and started talking about you and how he was going to kick your ass and El got so pissed she knocked him into the wall. With her mind. Like she used to. Her…her powers came back. They’re not gone.”

There was a long pause. Then suddenly they could hear the distinctive sound of Mike swearing and something being thrown. El jumped, tears flowing faster, and Will pressed the radio button closer to him.

“Mike, don’t break the radio! We won’t be able to hear you! Mike, do you copy?”

“I’m…I’m here,” Mike replied, his voice trembling with rage. “But, guys…are you sure they were El’s powers? Are you sure she wasn’t just really pissed and shoved his sorry ass across the room on her own?”

“Couldn’t move,” El said, tears starting to subside. “Tried to, but…he was holding on too tight.” Again, there were a few swear words that came across, however much Mike tried to conceal them, and the fury of Mike’s voice made Will aware that he wasn’t abiding by his attempt to stay calm.

“Did anyone see?” Mike asked, forcing his shaking voice to relax. “Did anyone else at the party see what happened? Did you have to tell anyone about…you know, about yourself, El?”

“Paul was in the room knocked out, so it’s possible he saw bits of it,” Will continued. “But I don’t think El explained anything.”

“Good. We need to keep it that way.”

“Mike, she has to explain why…”

“Will, the more people know about her the more trouble she’s in. That’s what Hop said ages ago! Especially with her powers only showing up at unpredictable moments! I mean…Paul’s a popular guy, he has lots of friends, it just doesn’t seem safe.”

“He was knocked out; don’t know if he saw,” El said, her voice quivering as well. “I’ll…say I pushed him.”

“He’ll never believe that, but okay,” Will mumbled. 

“What? Guys, I can’t understand you!” Mike called as the radio stood halfway between Will and El. 

“Sorry. We’ll figure out what to do about Paul,” Will continued. “But we had to tell Leslie.”

“Aw, damn it guys, why?”

“She’s my friend,” El insisted, bravery winning over as she took the phone. She looked determinedly at it. Mike may be upset about Tony, and that was understandable. He also had a decent point about Paul. But he would not exclude Leslie, the best friend that El found in Illinois, and that point was being made clear. 

“And…she’s okay? Did she believe it all?”

“Sort of,” El said quietly. “Seemed weird about it. But she said she did. And she won’t tell anyone. She’s not like that.”

It was quiet for a moment as none of them knew what to say or where to take the conversation. Will exchanged a soft look with El, squeezed her hand, and took the radio.

“Mike…I’m going to leave you to El now. You can radio me after.” He gave her one more look to be sure that this was okay, but she nodded. The worst part was over. Telling him was over. She would take whatever came next.

“Just me,” El told Mike as Will closed the door behind him. For a moment she didn’t hear anything, just heavy breathing. “Mike? Mike, are you okay?”

“Me? El are YOU okay? I feel HORRIBLE,” Mike said, his voice quivering. He could no longer conceal his emotions, as the revelation of what happened to El brought him to tears. The thought of anyone touching El - his sweet, selfless, beautiful El - when he couldn't protect her broke him. Hearing Mike start to get emotional about this only caused El to be more upset, and she nodded her head.

“I’ll be okay,” she said. “I just…I don’t understand.”

”Me neither,” Mike told her. “What makes disgusting pieces of shit think they have any right to go ahead and grab a girl like that when she tells him no…”

“My powers,” El continued. “Well…that too, but…I haven’t been able to do anything or use my powers at all. How did that happen?” 

“I…I don’t know, El,” Mike replied. “But…maybe we can come up with some theories, try to figure it out. I mean, the party. Do you…is it okay if I tell them about this? I won’t say anything if you’re not comfortable.”

“No, it’s okay. Just…I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Is…is that okay?”

“Of course, El. I understand and I’d never make you. I’m just…I’m sorry this happened to you. I wish I was there with you so much.”

“I do too,” El cried, longing more than anything to fall into his arms and stay there. She missed them so much. She missed HIM so much.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Paul wrestled the entire situation in his mind a hundred times and it still didn’t make sense. 

As much as his parents told him he had to be perfect all the time – as much as everyone seemed to play along with this complete lie that he WAS perfect – he wasn’t. He knew that much. He couldn’t fight to save his life and now that was proven without a doubt after Tony knocked him out with a single punch. But one thing he admitted he COULD do was pay attention to details. That was how he did well in school and football. He was keenly observant and his senses never failed him.

Jane was a little girl. A LITTLE girl. She couldn’t have been more than five foot two and definitely didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. She had a tiny stature. She was as gentle as a lamb. While he believed a girl could fight – especially since his little sister Alison earned herself a black belt, after all – he also believed in physics and the order of the universe. A girl who couldn’t even push this pervert off of her moments ago could never, in the position that she was standing, with her arms completely restrained, produce the force necessary to shove a bull like Tony off of her in that way.

How the hell did it happen?

One thought kept entering his mind, and he hated himself for it because of its sheer stupidity, but it was logically the only way that made sense…

Did she do it some OTHER way?

Did she have ABILITIES?

No, no, he sounded like a crazy person. Real people didn’t have abilities. That was the stuff of comics that he occasionally got to peek at at a friend’s house (because, of course, his parents would never allow their Ivy League material son to read garbage like that). It wasn’t reality. Little girls didn’t have powers that they could use to thrust a person double their size across a room.

But what else was there?

It was maddening. Just like Jane herself.

He couldn’t even explain what it was that he liked about her so much. To be honest, none of the girls at school ever captured his interest at all. They were just so…boring. Predictable. Worried about trite and superficial things like clothes and gossip and assorted other nonsense. They tried so hard to get his attention, and a piece of him wondered what the hell was wrong with him. All of his friends told him to go for it; talked about the assorted awful things they’d do to those girls if given the chance. The whole thing made him uncomfortable. If anyone talked about Ashley like that, he’d want to wring their necks.

Not like he could.

But people all believed that he did. Despite him being perfectly polite, it was always assumed that he was someone you didn’t want to cross. Probably because he had pull. He got in well with the teachers and coaches; getting on his bad side was bound to look bad. Maybe it was the crowd he kept? The football players were a rough bunch. Most were nice but there were a few that took advantage of their popularity and it was easy to judge him by the company he kept, he supposed.

Still, he played along. Sometimes he’d chime in and talk about who he thought was hot, just to fit in. Just to feel normal. Because he felt like he was SUPPOSED to like all these girls and want to do those things to them, but he couldn’t. He even had a small thing with Marcy, who was his really good friend, but fortunately she told him after a few make out sessions that kissing him was more like kissing a brother than a boyfriend. The feeling was beyond mutual. He heard all about making out and how great it was. They did it a few times and he felt nothing but wetness on his mouth. But they were mutual about their breakup and stayed good friends, no hard feelings…it was easy to go back to his normal routine of pretending to care about these ordinary girls.

Then he was assigned to tutor Jane.

Something about her was different. It wasn’t like these guys described; it wasn’t like he felt the urge to “do” anything to her. He just respected her in a way that he never respected anyone at school. There was something so raw and real and honest about her. She seemed innocent and sweet, like a deer in headlights, but a smart one who just wanted to opportunity to understand what those headlights were. One of his buddies in class made a crack about her being in special ed, but he did what he always did to shut those guys up; gave them a look like he was GOING to do something, scared them, and made them stop.

Still, spending time with Jane was a breath of fresh air. She didn’t expect anything out of him. She was just happy to have his help, and helping her was something he could do out of a true desire to do it. He LIKED helping her. While tutoring itself was a college application builder, of course, attending to Jane in particular and devoting extra hours to her was something that was a comfort. SHE was a comfort.

Maybe she could be it…she could be the one to make him feel normal. If he asked her out, if he invited her as a date to this Halloween party like all the guys did to their newest cheerleaders, that could work! Because, hey, with a girl as pretty as she was on his arm, he could feel whole again.

Yet, it was the biggest challenge ever. She smiled at him. She seemed to like him. But Jane didn’t flirt; it was like she didn’t know how. Like it was something she never really thought of doing. Every attempt he made to woo her in the way he did to Marcy – carrying her books, walking her to class – she refused. But not in a stand-offish way; with a smile on her face, like she really didn’t get what he was trying to do.

He started to think maybe she DIDN’T get what he was trying to do.

His advisor at tutoring said that Jane was different; special. He said he couldn’t disclose too much but she had a troubled past, had gone through several homes, and school was a brand new concept for her. Paul wondered what she’d been through. Was she hurt? The idea that anyone could hurt the cute, starry eyed girl in front of him made him feel angry. Life was so unfair. It made him even more obligated to try to help her. 

Then he saw her at the party, looking happy and truly pretty in that Devil dress – with that weird Leslie girl and Will. Yes, he’d heard of Will. It was his knowledge of Will that prompted him to help Jane in the first place; poor kid was being terrorized, Paul had no idea why and he couldn’t help but wonder about him. He knew he was supposed to be a really good artist. He seemed like a genuinely good guy. He wondered for a moment if Jane liked him at any point, but then heard they were kind of like adopted siblings from someone else and a weight lifted…

…until she went missing and he found out that she was upstairs in the bathroom, the one right near where Tony and Lisa were screaming at each other before.

He didn’t know Tony that well, but sometimes he showed up at Pep Rallies to take some beer. He talked about Jane before he knew that Paul knew who she was – said disgusting, perverse, sickening things about what he’d like to do to her. 

Alarm bells went off.

He ran upstairs and, sure enough, in Marcy’s parents’ bedroom, Tony had Jane pressed against him and struggling to break free. Paul was never compelled to hit anyone in his life, but he ran over and tried, and Tony’s fist came on his face so hard and so fast he couldn’t brace himself. The pain hit him immediately; radiated through his whole body as he heard Jane struggle. He only caught a few words…

A boyfriend…

A picture of him…

Of course! Of course she had a boyfriend! Of course that’s why she didn’t flirt back with him or know what to do! What would make him think that a girl as perfect for him as Jane would NOT have a boyfriend? He was just playing this over in his mind when he heard a thrust and a crash.

He forced himself up as footsteps echoed in the hallway, and hurried into the bathroom after Jane. She said she pushed him, but that made no sense. She said she’d explain, and ran off.

But no way in Hell was Tony getting away with this.

When Marcy and a crowd came up, Paul said that Tony had a girl in here – lied that he couldn’t see who – and tried to force himself on her when she shoved him off. Marcy freaked out and thought of calling the police; this was her house, after all. There was property damage and a possible assault that took place here and she didn't need her parents hearing about it later. Lisa threatened to kick her ass if she DID call the police. In the din of confusion Marcy’s older sister DID call the police, hid all the booze and asked everyone out of her closest friend’s circle to leave. Paul stayed as they made a statement that they had “a few” people over and one of the boys invited a girl upstairs and tried taking advantage of her when they were both asked to leave. The police documented the incident just to cover Marcy and her household in case anyone came to them later with a report. They seemed doubtful that just a girl defending herself caused the damage, and tried to press everyone about which other crowd of people got involved in fighting Tony. They wondered how one girl could cause such damage. Paul wondered the same thing and didn't blame the officers for doubting him. He doubted himself.

Meanwhile, as far as everyone else knew, nothing that bizarre had happened. Nobody else saw the crash but Paul. Nobody else found the story hard to believe.

But Paul did…

And perhaps Jane didn’t feel enough trust in him to tell him now, but he was here and her boyfriend wasn’t. She would. They had a good friendship at the very least for right now and, if there was another thing Paul was good at, it was people. He’d figure this out somehow.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“You’ve gotten quiet over the years, Jim.” Eric Callahan looked across the airport in England, where they had transferred from base in the Ukraine. He not only looked different, with his beard and hair longer and more unkept than he had ever seen, but he acted different. Jim always had a jaded way about him, but he had some kind of energy. Pep. This Jim was a sullen shell of a man. 

He would feel sympathy.

But, no…

He wasn’t here for that. He wasn’t paid for that. His duty was to the country he served for over 20 years and his acquaintance status with Jim Hopper wouldn’t change that.

Jim looked over at him, looking as though words were forming in his mind but that he lacked the energy to utter them. What was going on in that head? He had barely said a word.

“So you can tell me,” Callahan told him. “Now that we’re far away. These guys in the prison – they made you go into some weird…what, alternate dimension or something like that?”

Jim could only bring himself to nod, remembering how he had appeared in that place without explanation the day Joyce pushed that button that he was certain would kill him. For a moment, he thought that he had died, and that this was really a cold version of Hell. It was dark. It was freezing. There were dust mites everywhere and everything looked withered away. He waited for monsters and dangers on each corner like he had seen the last time he visited this place, but it was only empty. Lifeless. Rotting from the inside.

Then the really unusual thing happened.

After several days of struggling to survive and get himself out of this place, he found an opening. The weird thing is, while most of the Upside Down looked like Hawkins, there was a point where he reached a vacant space; empty, and then, alongside it, it looked like an entirely different place. A big prison with walls like a fortress in the midst of the blistering cold. Was this a way out?

He followed the path to the building in front of him and walked inside.

“Hello?” he called. Maybe someone out there could help to direct him out. Maybe others had been trapped. “HELLO?”

Nothing…

He followed the path to the inside of the building where he heard what sounded like faint murmurs of people. He followed those murmurs and came to a room that looked an awful lot like the set up where he disappeared in the first place. There were scientists with coats and there was a laser…

And there was a hole.

Wherever this lead, it was an exit, and an exit back to the real world meant that he could get back there and do what he had to do to go back to El. He wondered where she was and how she was faring without him; felt regret that he left things between them so badly as he yelled and screamed and complained about everything. It was such a waste of their time. He’d make it back. He had to.

Only when he got to that hole, it made him collapse. Having been in this world for several days did something to his breath. He gasped and choked for air, and felt himself go black, coming to only to see that he was in a cell. The people in the coats had taken him.

He was a prisoner.

Not only that, but it took days for someone to come to him and translate in English what it was that they wanted. They knew he knew about this universe where he had previously come from. He survived it somehow. He was to help them find out more about it and see if it was inhabitable; see if it was a place where people on Earth could gather further resources, land and possibly some advancements in medicine and technology. Hopper tried fighting but it was pointless to argue as a prisoner of war. The power was out of your hands and exerting yourself resulted in punishments. Violent punishments.

It was really a miracle that Officer Callahan found a way to save him; snuck in under cover as a guard and found a way to burrow through the prison plumbing system with Hopper. The two of them walked by foot all the way to the Ukraine where there was a US military base. It took them the better part of 3 weeks, but it was worth it.

And, for the most part, Hopper was quiet.

There were no words to say.

And he certainly wasn’t going to tell him that, in his prison induced exploration, he tried to leave a message to El that he was still alive; a watch. When they managed to get another gate to Hawkins - created by the energy released by the source - almost open again he quietly chucked it out. 

He hoped that she’d find it.

_________________________________________________

“Mike, you have yet another visitor while you’re on stock duty. You’re lucky it’s me and not Keith.” Mike turned from the stack of VHS tapes sitting in front of him in the direction of Robin, who was looking at him in annoyance. 

“Well…could you just tell them I’ll call them later or something? I just sorted these by genre and I don’t want to come in and get all confused.”

“Um, I’m not your secretary, last I checked. Go be a civilized human being and tend to her. Oh, and tell her that tomato juice is a killer hangover cure.” Mike sighed heavily. Max. He wondered if she had any recollection at all of what went on yesterday.

He walked out of the stock room to see her standing in the aisle of the store looking like absolute shit. Her face was almost green, her eyes were covered with a dark pair of sunglasses, she was walking slowly and weakly, and her mouth was frowning as though she swallowed something really bitter.

“Hey,” Mike said, gesturing to her to come to the stockroom. Robin passed from behind him.

“You are NOT bringing her to the stockroom!” Robin said. “First of all she looks like she’s about to puke and Keith will have Cheeto colored kittens if any puke gets on the videos.”

“Just a minute, Robin. I’m sorry!” Mike said. “And…she won’t puke. I hope.” Max slowly approached him and followed him behind the desk to the stock room. 

“What the hell are you doing here alone?” Mike asked. “A hangover this bad can probably make you dizzy. I’m calling Lucas.”

“Don’t bother; he hasn’t answered my calls all day. Don’t worry, though. I’ll be fine,” Max assured him unconvincingly. “Just…listen, did I say anything…weird to you guys last night? Because I had a feeling that I did but I honestly can’t remember and…”

“Yeah...only that you went to Steelworks alone and found Hopper’s watch. We saw it.”

“Shit,” Max swore. Covering her head with both her hands to relieve her headache and try to calm her nerves. “No wonder Lucas isn’t answering my walkie. He must be really pissed.”

“Well, yeah, but only because he doesn’t want to see you hurt,” Mike assured her. “But that’s not the weirdest thing. I was going to wait until tomorrow to tell you guys because I figured you wouldn’t be feeling so well, but…something bad happened. To El.”

“What?” Max asked, taking off her sunglasses and looking at him through bloodshot eyes. “Did something really happen, Mike, or are you just being overprotective and…”

“No. That Tony guy tried to force himself on her at the Halloween party. Will and El told me a couple of hours ago.” 

“Oh, shit!” Max replied. “Holy shit, poor El, that’s just…is she okay? Maybe I can try to call her; I know it’s long distance but it’s worth getting yelled at by Neil just to make sure she’s okay. How completely awful! She must feel so violated!”

“That’s just it,” Mike continued, lowering his voice. “He didn’t get too far. He couldn’t because she threw him off of her and tossed him into the wall. Her powers came back.”

Max took a moment to process this, pacing back and forth in the little room they had in the stock room. 

“What?” Mike asked. “What are you thinking?”

“Well, in addition to trying to think of a way to get myself to Illinois to disembowel Tony…”

“I have about a dozen methods. We’ll swap notes later.”

“Noted…something is weird. The blackout. The watch. El’s powers working again. Those visions of Hopper probably weren’t just Visions, Mike. Whatever happened to her powers…they’re coming back.”

Mike nodded, and, this time, he wasn’t going to pretend that Max didn’t have a point. This couldn’t possibly all be a coincidence. There was something happening that was triggering a return of El’s powers, and it was probably bigger than simply nerves or anxiety. He knew that Lucas, in his protective desire to help Max, and Dustin, ever the optimist, would try to find some reason to fight them on this, but it was happening and they couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. They had to put their heads together and figure this out.

For El’s sake.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit longer than the others, but things are definitely going to start changing and picking up, and I simply didn't feel right breaking it into more than one chapter. Enjoy and PLEASE leave comments if you like what you're reading! I love the feedback!

_Dear Mike,_

_I feel so luckey to have you and that you rote me such a nice letter. It has been hard this week. I still feel bad about the partey. I herd they calld the police on Toney. That is what Paul says. He says that I shood talk to the police because I shood not let anyone treet me like that but I am afrade to go to the police because they wood probable ask qwestions and I do not want to anser any. It is hard to have to be at school with him. But he stays away. Leslee says it is because he thinks I will kick his ass. I think he herd abot the police. Will says who cares as long as he stay away. I think Will is right. Still, it is hard. I was very scared and felt very gross. I do not want any other boy to toch me and kiss me. Only you._

_But I have to think of the good things. That is what Joce says. No, I did not tell her. That would be werd. But I just told her I was haveing a bad week. She sed she was haveing one too. Will sed she is being werd and qwiet about some thing. She is a littel bit qwuiet. That is werd._

_It is just to weeks and to days until I see you and I am so exited. Let me try another silime. You are like the sun after a lot of relly bad rain. And I know that rain has an ai. My techer says I have to practice vowl blends. I will try._

_I love you,_

_El_

Mike pushed aside his mountain of homework and decided to read El’s letter for the fifth time. It was amazing how much her simple attempt at a simile warmed his heart when he was so stressed.

It had been a crazy week.

Lucas was very stubborn about Max and refused to speak to her for several days, which was unlike him. Dustin, in his typical Dustin fashion, told him to stop being a total asshole, because if he cared that much about his girlfriend being protected, he should be worried about treating her right. Mike didn’t want to interfere, since Lucas was good enough to have his back the one time he fought with El, but he thought Dustin was right. Lucas was right to be upset that Max would hurt herself, but, regardless, she had come up with something and being mad at her for it didn't change that.

The other two pored over this but neither could figure out what it meant. Lucas thought that it was perhaps just left behind; that it got transferred to the source through the Upside Down while the gate was closed, blasted into the gate and blasted back out again through another entrance by the source. Dustin said this made no sense, which was true. They didn’t know of a gate opening in the Steelworks; it was just a place where the mind flayer summoned his army. Max was torn between the two; if the monster was still there, who knew its powers and if it could create another opening to the gate in another spot. Mike was lost; he had no idea how to even explain it, but ever since he found that watch he felt funny.

He and Hopper always had a rocky connection, which didn’t seem to bother El, but it kind of bothered him now. Hopper meant the world to El no matter how much she teased him along with Mike, and he felt like he lost an opportunity to have a better relationship with him. Of course, that didn’t stop Mike’s anger that he kept her away from her for a year and then did everything he could to split them…but that all seemed so petty now. The prospect of Hopper being somewhere where he could have left this watch boggled Mike’s mind.

He thought of telling Will, but wondered if that was the best idea. Will had been through enough and, from the sound of it, things were at least turning up for him. Bullies left him alone, he mentioned that he had actually become really good friends with Leslie…or so he said. Mike wondered if maybe he had a thing for her, but Will insisted it wasn’t like that at all and he sounded pretty convincing. Either way, Mike was hoping he could meet Leslie while he was there and thank her. She was one person bringing two people he cared about most peace, and he felt like he owed her everything for that.

He was just poring this over in his mind when he saw a small figure in his peripheral vision. 

Holly.

As much as Mike’s instinct wanted to get mad at her for spying again, he remembered the weight of El’s words. He could be mean when he was mad. So he deeply sighed, sat up, and spoke to her. 

“Holly?”

Holly walked in, her face looking a little unhappy. He sometimes thought it was put on or dramatic, but this time, there was something different about it. It made her look even smaller than she was.

“Mikey, can I sit with you?” she asked softly and cautiously. A little piece of Mike’s heart broke that he made the little girl before him so seemingly frightened of just asking to be in his presence. He nodded his head and patted the spot on the bed next to him.

“Sure, Holly. I’m sick of homework anyway.” A smile appeared on Holly’s face and she ran to sit next to him on the bed. She peeked over at the paper he was reading, but then turned away like she hadn’t.

“It’s okay,” Mike told her. “I’m writing a letter. To…remember you met that girl who was here last Christmas?”

Holly nodded, smiling.

“She was pretty, Mikey. Do you love her?”

He couldn’t help but laugh. Kids were so forward. They didn’t even think to filter anything. It was kind of relieving in a way.

“Yeah, I do. I love her a lot.”

“You don’t…kiss her, do you?”

“Holly!” Mike called, giving her a tickle. She laughed extra loudly, happy to be embraced by her brother for once and not chased out of his room.

“Sorry!” Holly laughed.

“That’s…private!” Mike answered, continuing to tickle her. “You don’t ask people questions like that.”

“I didn’t know!” Holly replied, gasping for air. Mike finally gave up and released her, then rubbed her back soothingly.

“Seriously, though, you okay, Holly?” Mike asked. “You seem a little down lately.”

Holly sighed, then avoided Mike’s gaze. He realized that Max and El were both right. This poor girl needed to talk to someone. Something WAS bothering her.

“School is hard. The kids are mean to me. The teacher…she gets mad.” 

“Aw, I’m sorry, Holly,” Mike told her, wrapping his arm around her and holding her there. “I mean, I get it. School was tough for me too. But I found Will and then Lucas and later Dustin…and they made everything okay. You’ll find a friend. Just look for someone who isn’t playing with anyone else and play!”

“It’s hard. Everyone plays,” Holly answered, tears in her eyes. “They don’t play with me because…I…can I tell you a secret, Mikey?”

Mike nodded, not expecting anything too deep; these were first grader problems after all. But when you were six, you just didn’t know.

“I…sometimes see things. Like…people. I’m afraid to tell people because Mommy tells me it’s silly…”

Mike froze to the spot.

In the midst of all the weird things that were happening, Holly was now seeing people? She had to mean she had some sort of imaginary friend or something. This couldn’t be connected.

“Who do you see, Holly?”

“Well…promise you won’t be mad?” Mike nodded, feeling more and more ashamed of himself every second. Everyone in his life feared making him angry lately and it just showed him how much he had to stop freaking out and calm down.

“I promise, Holly.”

She looked at him, tears starting to form in her eyes.

“I see…that girl. Your girl. Jane? I see her.”

_________________________________________________________________________

“Are you going to go over and introduce yourself, Byers, or what?” Leslie stopped herself at Will’s locker at the end of the day and, as usual, her idea of an afternoon introduction was to completely startle him. He jumped, but couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“What? Leslie, what the hell?”

“That guy. The one right there.” The two of them looked on the opposite side of the hallway where what looked like a junior or senior was placing a small instrument case in his locker. Will rolled his eyes.

“Honestly…just because I admit I may…you know…like guys doesn’t mean I like every single one in the school and I’m ready to date them all.”

“AH!” Leslie shouted. Will jumped.

“What? WHAT?”

“You just said it yourself! Oh my God, I’m so happy for you, Will! That’s huge!”

“I said it to YOU,” Will continued. “I haven’t even told my friends from home yet.”

“There’s a time for everything,” Leslie said, patting him on the shoulder. “Baby steps.”

“Can I talk to you both?” A voice from behind Leslie startled them both, and they turned together to see Paul standing there in front of them.

“Thought you were supposed to be tutoring Hopper,” Leslie told him, checking the clock to make sure it was actually three and she wasn’t about to unknowingly ditch something. Hopper’s work ethic was rubbing off on her.

“I am; I told her to wait a few minutes,” Paul continued. “I just…listen, there are a few things I thought you guys could…you know, enlighten me on. Especially you.” Paul turned to Will and the soft look he gave him locked Will’s otherwise intimidated eyes in. Will tried not to focus on how green they were and how white his teeth were, but it was hard every time he was in his presence. 

“If it’s about Hopper, talk to her yourself,” Leslie volunteered. “I don’t talk about friends behind their backs with guys who are into them, Richards. Sorry to tell you.”

“It’s…it’s not bad stuff, I promise,” Paul stressed, his voice sincere and convincing. “It’s just…well, you know, I tutor her and…”

“Exactly. You tutor her. Your job is to help her with those vowel blends she’s having a hard time with, and there’s nothing else you need to know about her. I would back off a bit, because she already has a boyfriend. One that she’s head over heels in love with, by the way,” Leslie stressed. Will looked at her, slightly embarrassed. She was being very hostile for someone who had no idea what Paul was about to ask.

“Leslie…just see what he wants,” Will suggested softly. Leslie turned to Will, slight irritation in her eyes that he didn’t back her up.

“So head over heels she hasn’t even mentioned him to me one time?” Paul challenged. Leslie and Will exchanged looks. That was unusual. She usually mentioned Mike at every given possibility. 

“In…in what context would she?” Will asked. Leslie nodded, a victorious look on her face as he continued. “I mean, you’re talking about math and reading and all of that. She’s taking it seriously. Why would she have to bring up Mike?”

“Mike,” Paul repeated, sighing and looking down, then up again. “Okay, well…this has diverted attention from what I really wanted to talk about anyway, and that’s what happened at the party, NOT her boyfriend.”

“What about it?” Leslie asked, faking casual.

“Well…for starters, what the hell happened?”

“Tony is a pervert who couldn’t control his hands and so Hopper did what any woman should do and rammed his ass against a wall,” Leslie replied, shrugging. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

“You guys weren’t there,” Paul stressed, looking from one to the other desperately as though someone had to shed light on this. “You didn’t see it. You guys know Jane; she’s little. Tony had her pinned – PINNED – against a wall. Her arms were up over her head. She looked terrified. She couldn’t MOVE. How do you go from that to tossing a guy across the room like a rag doll?”

“Some…interesting martial arts training? I don’t know,” Leslie continued. Will was happy she kept volunteering because, while this story remained unconvincing, she was far less likely to cave than he was. The story didn’t make sense and no part of him could convincingly lie that it did.

“My sister is a black belt; I’ve been to every one of her boring competitions and I’ve never seen martial arts like that. Look...I’m not trying to be a jerk. It’s just…I was the only person there. The police were called. They seemed very unconvinced. This is my account on the record…”

“And you told them what you honestly know,” Leslie cut in. “There’s no way Yale can reject you for it, so you can calm down.”

“This isn’t about Yale,” Paul asserted, starting to get frustrated. This conversation was not at all going the way he hoped. “It’s…I just…I have started to care about Jane, okay? I just want to know that she’s okay.”

“She’s fine,” Leslie insisted. “Will and I are here to take care of her. And Mikey, even if he’s far away. She doesn’t need you to be her superhero. She’s stronger than you think.” 

At this Will nodded. He had to agree. El was strong; stronger than anyone else he knew. She was raised in a horrible lab. He didn’t know much about it but he knew she never had real parents, or love, or toys, or friends, or anything children need to grow healthy. And yet she had love in her heart anyway. He was amazed by it.

“Okay, I see my place here,” Paul replied, sighing. “We all care about Jane, so it would have been nice if I could have been let into this little circle you’ve got here, but I see that it’s far too exclusive.”

Will looked at him softly; something about the way he phrased it made him feel off. He had a point. He was the closest to a friend beyond Leslie and himself that El had. It didn’t seem fair to shut him out just because he was higher up on the social ladder at school than they were. That made them just as bad as the popular kids who never invited those less popular in. 

As Paul walked away, Leslie muttering something about good riddance next to him, Will thought maybe he could talk to Paul himself. Maybe not tell everything, but at least shed a little light. He WAS good to El and he deserved it.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

El spent that Saturday in the library going over some of the notes and flash cards that Paul wrote for her. While she was always still stressed about her powers, the one thing that stopped her from trying to gain control of them again was studying. She poured herself into it. She wore each new grade over a 75 like a medal of honor and liked that this – doing well on tests and impressing her teachers, Mike, and Joyce – was something she could control. 

She would get her second report card this week and she was really excited. She had been doing much better and she was hoping that she would see some improvement. The first one was full of Ds. She handed it to Joyce with her heart crushed, but Joyce gave her a hug and told her it would get easier and she would do better. El hoped for at least one B this time. She worked hard enough and she deserved it.

Still, her focus couldn’t get her attention off of the events of the last few days. Of Tony’s hands on her and the feel of his mouth on her neck. Of that awful feeling that she couldn’t remove him from her and he wouldn’t stop. Of the confusion she felt every time she reminded herself that her powers came back and thrust him off of her and she had no idea how.

She tried experimenting with her powers. She tried moving little things; paperclips, erasers, staples – none of them budged. What was this about?

Plus, Hopper had not appeared to her in well over a month and she started to think that she imagined him entirely as well. That kept her very disappointed.

After several hours, she couldn’t find the value of x any more. She grabbed her books and headed out of the library.

It was a lot darker than she thought it would be. Joyce wouldn’t be happy; she told her to be sure to get back from the library before dark. It wasn’t a long walk, though. She would be okay.

The cool breeze gave El some comfort. It reminded her of the way it felt on the back of Mike’s bike so long ago, as he pedaled steadily in front of her and she held on to his small, frail shoulders and waist. She thought of how that little boy she met years ago grew and was now so tall; the feel of his long, lanky frame in her arms and how good those long arms felt around her. She missed the comforting caress of his big, awkward hands as they gently touched her hands, her back, her face…

Suddenly, her pleasant thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of a butterfly. 

A butterfly? In November?

Paul just went over this with her. Spring was the season for butterflies. Now it was fall. What was a butterfly doing here? 

Not only that; the butterfly illuminated. It glowed in a way that didn’t seem natural. The last time she saw something like that was when…

El froze. A gasp escaped from her throat.

No.

No, no, no, not now….

A dark figure appeared from an alley where she was concealed. Big, funky hair, dark, smooth skin, dark eyes, and a stoic, serious face. 

“Hello, sister.”

Kali…

____________________________

“El? I mean…Jane? You see her?” Mike looked at Holly, trying very hard to ignore the ferocious beating of his heart in his chest. She looked down fearfully, as though he was going to be angry at her. Mike cautiously placed an arm around her, and gave her a little squeeze. “I’m not, mad, Holly. What do you see?”

“Lots of things,” Holly told him. “Sometimes just boring stuff…like, she’s in school and it’s hard just like it is for me. Sometimes I see bad things. A man. A man hurting her.”

“What man?” Mike asked, wondering if this was Holly’s clever way of getting her attention. Almost hoping that it was. Because the idea of his sister having some kind of sight into this universe was frightening. She was a little girl. That and he didn’t want to imagine anyone hurting El any more than he already had to.

“Well, one is more like not a man, man, but, like…like…”

“A teenager? Like Nancy’s boyfriend Jonathan?”

“Kind of. But he’s nice. This one is mean. And he was holding her and she cried and didn’t like that. It was so gross, Mike. He was kissing her. Here.” Holly pointed to the spot where her neck met her shoulders and goosebumps popped all over his skin. Holly saw El being assaulted by Tony. She saw it happen. There’s no way that she could have guessed that because not even El or Will told him that part happened (and he was quite glad, because his urge to murder Tony multiplied upon hearing it). 

“Are you mad at me?” Holly asked nervously.

“No, Holly, I’m not. I’m just…mad at the bad man that hurt her.”

“But he’s not the only one,” Holly said, looking both relieved at being able to say this and scared at what she’d seen. “There’s another man. He has scratches all over his face. He’s old. He has white hair and a suit.”

White hair?

No…

“What does he do?” Mike asked, his heart in his throat, unaware if he wanted to know the answer or not.

“I keep seeing it over and over and over and over…”

“What? Holly, it’s okay. I believe you. You can tell me. What do you see?” Holly turned away from Mike, swallowed, and spoke words that seemed painful to release.

“She gets tied up to a chair,” Holly said, shuddering a bit. The vision clearly upset her and the thought of it practically broke Mike’s heart. “He yells at her loud and says that she is not going to go away. That he is going to keep her. And she cries and cries and says, ‘Mike!’ But you’re not there. And then he calls these ladies and they take scissors and a big thingie and cut all her hair off. It goes…buzzzzzzz…and she cries so much that it’s sad and it makes me cry. Then he leaves her alone and she looks like she’s sleeping.” Mike, his heart so loud that he can almost imagine that Holly heard it, didn't know how to react. He wanted to get Cerebro and call El; call Joyce, tell them about this, but he didn't know what it all means yet. She saw Tony, but that was the past; he knew that El wasn’t with Brenner. Is it possible her future visions were faulty? Wrong? If there was a possibility that monster was after her, could they stop it?

And why El? Does she only see El?

Perhaps knowing that much could give him some relief, or, at the very least, some insight. 

“That’s…very sad, Holly. I’m so sorry that you see that. Is…I know this is hard, but is there anyone else you see besides her?” Much to his relief, Holly nodded. 

“Yes, but it’s weird. Sometimes I see Nancy…Mommy says it’s just because I miss her. But she’s just doing boring stuff like reading lots of books. And sometimes there are people…I don’t know them. Well…except your other friend and his mommy, but nothing bad happens to him, so it’s just weird.”

“What other friend?” Mike asked.

“Will; the boy who moved. And his mommy, the weird lady with the dark hair.” 

“What are they doing?” Mike asked, sincerely curious. Perhaps the nature of these visions would shed some light on whether they were true or not.

“She doesn't do much. Talks to some other guy, probably like a boss. Sometimes she drinks grown up drinks. Will...it’s…weird.”

“Weird?” Mike asked. This didn’t sound bad weird. A child’s perception of weird might be perfectly normal by adult standards. Anything had to be better than the idea of getting Mrs. Byers' clear dating life out of his head.

“He’s kissing a boy. Like a big handsome boy with dark hair.” 

Oh.

Ohhhh…

So much made sense now. So much that Mike didn’t even really think about. His weirdness and awkwardness around girls, his being closed off, his reluctance to talk to Mike about those sorts of things. This was his best friend. How did he not see it before?

Poor Will.

If that were true, imagine just carrying that and not being able to tell anyone?

“Is that…weird?”

“No,” Mike said quietly, trying not to get defensive on behalf of his friend. “No, Holly, it’s…I mean, sometimes boys kiss girls and sometimes they kiss boys.”

“Gross,” Holly said quietly, and Mike tried his best not to lose his temper. It wasn’t her fault they were raised by their father who liked to mutter that these things weren’t normal within earshot of all of them. Mike wasn’t sure how he didn’t just grow up echoing him; the good influence of his mother and sister, perhaps. But right now the only thing concerning him was that Will went so long dealing with this alone and didn’t feel he could talk to him. 

That and it wasn’t far-fetched. If that wasn’t happening now, it could be happening in the future. And that would mean her future visions were sharp. 

“Oh and there’s a man…that police man that died.”

At this, Mike jumped.

She saw Hopper?

“The police man? You saw him?” Mike asked.

“Yes. But it’s weird because he died. Do you think he’s a ghost?”

“I…don’t think so. Maybe it’s from before,” Mike lied, leaning in eagerly to Holly. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her more. “Holly, when you see him, what is he doing?”

“He’s in some spooky place,” Holly answered. “There are, like, little things flying everywhere. Maybe bugs. And he has longer hair and a big long beard like Santa...he looks yucky like he needs a bath. Like really dirty. And the last time I saw him, there was a hole and he took his watch and threw it out. Weird.”

His watch…

Mike soothed Holly and thanked her for telling him everything, and made her pinky promise that she would tell him anything else she saw. She asked if they could do something else and he reluctantly played with her figures for a little while, his mind a million miles away. He had to tell the others about this; El and Will too. They had to sit and discuss it in person. Most importantly, he had to get in touch with El and let her know to be careful. Not to go out without Will. To stay away from anyone strange or unusual…

_________________________________________________________________________________

“You don’t look happy to see me. You think I’m mad about the whole abandoning me thing? Water under the bridge. We’re family, after all.” Kali walked closer to El, who felt her entire body trembling. She didn’t know why; Kali told her in their brief few days with her that she wasn’t in a prison and she wouldn’t force her to stay. So, she shouldn’t be angry that she made a choice to leave. And yet…how? How did she find her? Why did she find her?

“H-how…”

“It’s amazing,” Kali said, holding up a radio that looked a lot like El’s. “When you decide to make nice with a cop for a night just to get a hold of his radio, you can discover incredible things. It turned out that on Halloween some girl was almost assaulted and the creep who did it wound up thrown against a wall mysteriously. Did damage to the house that a wild animal being set loose would have done. Policeman thought maybe there were other men involved. Odd. Sounded…like the work of someone I knew. It took me a few days to track down the precinct and to try to find you from where the group and I are hiding outside of Chicago, but I finally did.” El looked confused as Kali stood in front of her, almost confrontational, but with a quiet passive aggressive tone to her. 

“I…I have to go home,” El said, passing her and walking quickly.

“Where? It can’t be with the policeman; you told me he lived in Indiana. So, something had to happen with him. And those friends you ran to save. Let me guess…they got freaked out, they got sick of covering for you, right?”

“He’s dead!” El shouted at her. “He…died.” Kali looked at her, unmoved, as though El’s emotions were something she once felt but had somehow outgrown.

“Let me guess. You had something to do with that. Accidentally. That was my second thought; I was hoping it wasn’t that one.”

Those words hit El like a punch to the gut. She never really thought about how she may have caused Hop to die, but it was sometimes a whisper that lingered in the back of her mind. One that she wouldn’t hear because she had Joyce and Will and Mike all telling her that Hopper loved her and would have done anything for her.

“He thought he could save you…”

“It wasn’t just about me!” El shouted, her voice deep with disdain and resentment. “There were things…monsters…”

“…and how did they get to Hawkins, huh? They just happened to show up on their way to a Florida vacation? Jane – it’s like I’ve been trying to tell you – you can’t do this. What you want; to live a normal life, have normal friends, be a normal person. You’re NOT normal. You’re like me, and I’ve been worried about you since you ran off, but now – NOW – I’ve found you. And I have another chance to SAVE you, Jane.”

“My name is NOT Jane,” El said pointedly, turning her back and walking away. “It’s El. Jane is…is what I was supposed to be, but that’s not me. It’s just a name I’ll have to use to get through school, and once I’m done, I’ll change it. When I'm 18, I can.”

“Jane IS you. It’s the name your MOTHER gave you. And El…what…what is that? You made a cute little nickname out of this?” Kali reached for El’s wrist and removed the enormous watch that covered her 011 tattoo at all times. “This is abuse, Jane. You’re making light of the abusive, awful things that happened to you and using it to, what, become a different person? Like you ever COULD.”

“Just because it didn’t work for you doesn’t mean it can’t work for me,” El insisted, continuing to walk fast. Kali, however, was as persistent as she was cunning, and kept walking.

“It can’t work for ANYONE,” Kali insisted. “What, you think you’re somehow less broken than I am? That you have something special that can just turn off what comes along with being who you are like a switch?”

“My powers are gone,” El retorted, still walking and not even looking at Kali. “So if you need someone to…I don’t know, help you kill people, you can’t ask me to do it. I can’t.”

“What?” Kali asked, stopping El in her tracks and facing her in her direction. For the first time this entire conversation, she looked surprised and concerned. 

“My powers,” El told her, sighing and calming down at Kali’s softer voice. “I…I was attacked by a monster from…this other place. It bit my leg. A piece of it got inside of me. My friends took it out and…I don’t know, after that, I just…I can’t do what I used to do.” Kali stopped for a moment to think, her hand still on El’s, and, for a moment, El didn’t want to move. Was there an answer to this? Did Kali know something she didn’t? “D-do you have any idea why…”

“No,” Kali told her, looking away, and then back at El. “But, wait, did this just happen?”

“Over a year ago. The Fourth of July last year. 1985.”

“But…that doesn’t make any sense,” Kali continued, shaking her head. “I found you because your powers…I mean, was that YOU who…”

“Yes. It was me,” El said, her eyes watering at the thought of Tony, who she tried to push out of her mind despite having to see him every single day at school. It never got easier. Pretending it didn’t happen was a strategy that almost got her through the day, but reminding herself that it did nauseated her. Disgusted her…

“I’m sorry that happened to you, Jane,” Kali said. “He deserved what he got. If you want, I can…”

“No,” El asserted. “I just want to forget about it. I have…I have a family. They take care of me.”

“I’ve had many, Jane,” Kali told her, taking her wrist, easing its grip and holding her hand. “They either abandoned me or…bad things happened to them. It hurts. It hurts so badly. Do you really want to make bad things happen to these people?” A tear dripped from El’s eye onto her hand, joined with Kali’s. She never thought that her presence could hurt people, and the idea of it caused her physical pain.

“I love them,” El said. “The family…Mike, my…”

“Ah…I see,” Kali continued, a knowing smile on her face. “You’re in love, huh?” El looked down, not even wanting to meet Kali in the eye. She never mentioned Mike to her before.

“Yes.”

“And do you really love this boy very much? Want to see him happy?”

“Of course,” El replied defensively. Kali reached her hand to El’s shoulder and gave it a patronizing squeeze.

“Let him go, Jane. Your presence in his life…I bet it’s already put him in serious danger, hasn’t it?” El looked away. Yes. It had. Mike almost died for her several times. In the gym at school, standing by her fallen body and saying Papa would have to kill him and the boys first before getting to her. Going into the underground tunnels to distract the demodogs when she had to close the gate. Coming after Billy with a baseball bat and charging after him in the mall. There were so many times he could have died for her. He was willing to sacrifice everything for her.

“I thought so,” Kali continued. “And that’s what you want? To watch this boy that you love suffer and die because of you? I mean, think about it, Jane. Without you, what would this boy, what would this family be like now?” 

El couldn’t take anymore. She didn’t want to think about this. It was painful and frustrating and, worst of all, it was true. Without her opening the gate, the Byers would be in Hawkins. The boys would all be together and happy. Hopper would be alive. Everyone would be fine. The pain and struggle and separation – she caused it. She caused ALL of it.

“Leave me alone,” El told her, tears falling from her eyes and trying to run.

“Wait!” Kali called. “Jane, I won’t try to force you to come with me but just let me tell you one thing. Please!”

“You’ve said enough,” El called back, continuing to walk, but Kali, fast, stood in front of her and handed her a piece of paper.

“I thought you may not want to see me, so at least take this,” Kali told her. “It’s the address of the warehouse where you can find me. You have a choice, Jane, you always do. You can stay with this family if you want, but, well…when you just can’t take it anymore and you face reality, you are always welcome back with me.”

“I don’t want it,” El told her, turning her head away.

“Just TAKE it. You don’t have to ever come see me, but…take it. Think about it.”

“If I do, will you leave me alone?” El asked, looking at the crumpled-up piece of paper in Kali’s hand. Kali extended it into El’s and held it, making it crumple even more.

“Yes, unless you want me. But trust me – you will. I’m the only sister you’ve got.” Kali left the paper in El’s hand and started walking in the other direction. El turned to her to give one last shout.

“You’re wrong,” El told her. “I…I have people who can fight. Who can take care of me. Because that’s what you do for family.” Kali gave her a shrug and a grin, hands in her pockets.

“Whatever you say. I’ll see you soon, sister.” With that, she walked off, and El hurried home. The crumpled paper in her hand stayed there until she rushed to her room, quietly giving Joyce a “lost track of time” answer when asked where she’d been, and gave it a long look.

She hurt everyone she loved.

She hurt Hop. He’d be alive without her.

She hurt Mike.

She hurt this family that took her in. It was her fault they were so hurt in the first place. Will would never know the Upside Down without her. 

Was Kali right?

No.

No, Kali was bitter and jealous. It was like Mike said when she spoke to him about her the first time she met her sister. He said not to listen. She just never was lucky enough to find people as good to her as El had, and she tried to shame El out of being in good relationships.

Still…

Her powers were gone. And Kali seemed confused, but she also seemed smart. If anyone could help her figure out what this meant, it was her. 

She hid the paper inside her book bag, where it would always be near her, even at school, and joined Joyce in the other room, pestering her to come inside and eat dinner.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

“Oh, for God’s sake, Murray, open the door!”

Joyce looked into Murray’s camera, annoyed. She'd already had a bad enough day, with El deciding to take her time at the library and almost giving Joyce a heart attack that she was taken or lost somewhere. The last thing she needed was Murray's antics, but they were too close for her not to endure it. The two had been meeting twice a week to go over whatever evidence he could find from his contacts in Russia on a missing prisoner. Poring over odd translations and codes led them nowhere. This time, however, Murray said he had what looked more promising. 

The door opened and Joyce entered Murray’s place, seeing him sitting at his table where a mess of papers sat. He had some amber liquid in a glass and he had an empty glass for her, and started pouring.

“I’m driving, Murray. I can’t,” she told him. 

“You’ll sleep in the guest room. You’ll want to,” he told her. Joyce nervously put her hand to the glass tentatively and looked at Murray in suspicion.

“What do you mean?”

“Officer Eric Callahan has been in the US Army since the seventies. He’s now assigned to secret government projects. Finding information on him was particularly difficult because our government does all they can to hush up information on this division like they never existed. But fortunately for me, I did some searching.” He nodded his head to the corner of the room, where a crumbled, dilapidated box with the word “Vietnam” in Hopper’s dinstinctive scrawl sat.

“Where did you get that?” Joyce asked, walking over to it and reaching to touch it. It connected her to Hop somehow.

“I took a little road trip and went to that abandoned cabin of his to see if maybe he had any documents from his time in the war. Sure enough, he had a whole box. Once I had his badges and all of his assignment information it was easy to look up who else was assigned with him and start making a few phone calls.”

“So how did you find out about this Eric guy if he’s so hushed up?”

“Found his mother,” Murray replied, a malicious grin on his face. “She’s in an assisted living center; not entirely there, but she knows all about her son and where he is. She kind of forgot she’s not supposed to tell me that stuff.” Joyce shook her head at Murray in disapproval.

“You went to interrogate a woman being treated at an assisted living center?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Murray asked. “Of all the people in Hopper’s division, this is the only one who isn’t dead or otherwise accounted for. It’s got to be him. Come on, Joyce, he’s in a secret government operation? Hopper’s somehow escaped? I can almost guarantee he’s with him.”

Joyce grabbed the drink Murray poured for her and took a long swig. The idea that he could be so close and that her hope may have some merit to it was unsettling; the thought of being disappointed while they were this close to something was heartbreaking.

“Okay,” Joyce continued. “But what does that mean? We know this officer most likely went to rescue him. Fine. But do we know where he is? Do we know what Eric plans to do with him? How do we know the government plans to just send him home?”

“Oh, I have a feeling they don’t,” Murray continued, sipping his own drink. “This is the same government that funded that God forsaken lab in the first place. I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone responsible for it was still doing undercover work and that Hopper is their missing key.” 

Joyce took another swig. This didn’t make sense.

“You’re saying his friend from the war is turning him over to…Dr. Brenner or whoever? That’s not some twisted lab employee – they were in the war together!”

Murray felt himself release a low chuckle and looked at Joyce in a patronizing, amused way. She scowled back at him, although she was starting to understand his thinking, which frightened the hell out of her.

“Do you really think friendship or any of that matters in this situation? This man is married to his job. As per his Mom he never married, never had kids, never had a life of his own. He is their bitch, Joyce. And when you’re someone’s bitch, nothing else matters. You should know. You’re your kids’ bitch, after all.”

“NEVER call me ANYONE’S bitch!” Joyce shouted, standing up and pacing. Her breath sped up as she let these thoughts roll around in her mind. She hated to admit it, but perhaps he had a point. “So…okay, the government could have Hop. Where? How can we get to him?”

“That’s the next step,” Murray sighed, sitting back and sipping his own drink. “We start looking through articles about where suspicious activity has taken place, look for a pattern, and try pinpointing where they could be.” Joyce also sighed, looking at the tremendous pile of paper clippings on top of Murray’s table. If it were for anyone else, for anything else, she would have left. But this was Hopper, and she was going to go through every single clip if it meant that she could find him.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

“Chief Hopper. You’ve certainly changed since the last time I’ve seen you.”

Jim Hopper looked to the doorway where Officer Callahan left him just a few minutes ago. They made their flight back to the US and Callahan told him that he was taking him to a debriefing room where they could then determine what he had learned and he would be free to go. The room seemed off; neat, clean, tidy. It didn’t look at all like the stale, strange rooms where he would question people while working homicide in New York. He expected Callahan to return with whoever he was speaking about.

He was not expecting this.

The man before him had the same cunning gleam in his snake-like eyes. The same neat, white hair. The same overpriced suit. The same icy disposition. But his face – his face had hideous scars all over them, probably due to the attack from the monster he heard that he’d endured years before.

This man locked his El in a cell. He denied her love and attention. He wanted her back – wanted to take her away from her Eggos and her friends and her soaps and everything that put that sweet, innocent smile on her face that she’d been robbed of for way too many years.

Instict kicked him and he immediately got up, ran to the man, and reached for his throat.

Two men behind him grabbed him, and he felt a sharp poke in his arm as he saw red, struggling to get his hands on the man before him and kill him with his bare hands.

“A sedative,” the man told him, not even flinching. “We’ve heard of your…animalistic instincts. Alcohol does terrible things to the mind and one’s state of aggression.”

“What the hell is this?” Hopper asked, feeling himself get dizzy. “How did I wind up in here, you son of a bitch?”

“You forget, Chief Hopper, that I have been hired by the government to do important research and, as such, they are always eager to assist me. Our national advances in science take precedence over…well, whatever you represent. Small town justice with a bottle in hand.”

“Fuck you!” Hopper shouted, spitting at him angrily. The men on either side of him held him down and one tazed him, adding further pain and dizziness to his mind. 

“Not too much, I need him focused enough to hear me,” the voice in front of him – the voice of Dr. Brenner – said. He knelt down in front of him, so that he and Hopper were face to face. His voice, usually calm and void of emotion, started to become angry as well.

“You have something that belongs to me,” Dr. Brenner said. “That was promised to me in exchange for that boy that you cared so much about years ago.”

“That SOMETHING is a human being,” Hopper grunted, trying his best to reply with the fury and the intensity that he felt, although his weakened state rendered it impossible. “She’s a person and she doesn’t belong here with you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Dr. Brenner said. “Human beings are weak. They’re powerless. We’ve made ourselves that way. For our race to survive we need to breed our race to be strong. Free of frivolous things that we’re all so obsessed with. We need her, Chief. The way she was. The world needs her. There are things out there that threaten our entire race as we know it and YOU, master of justice, have just managed to disarm the most powerful weapon that we have in fighting it so that you could make up for losing your last child and replace her with another one. With a girl you sold out to me. She's really better off with me, then, isn't she?” Every urge in Hopper sought to jump up and destroy the man in front of him – punch him, kick him, watch him suffer until he breathed his last. But he couldn’t move. 

“Right,” Dr. Brenner said. “So, as far as everyone knows, you’re dead. We can certainly make that happen for real. Nobody would be any the wiser. Or…you can bring her to us. Because if you don’t, this monster that she’s unleashed will find a way of resurfacing. And you and I both know that, without her help, everyone will die. Is that what you want, chief?”

“I’d rather die,” Hopper coughed out. “She thinks I’m dead anyway; they all do. Nobody can get hurt.” Dr. Brenner gave the men on either side of him a look.

“Oh, I wasn’t giving you a choice,” Brenner continued. “I was just letting you know that there are two ways we can do this. You’ve chosen the hard way. Take him away.” And with that, the men on either side of Hopper dragged him to an isolated cell and shut the door. Unable to move, unable to do much of anything, Hopper let out a howl of utter despair, tears falling into his long, messy beard as he thought of El – his El – at the mercy of this monster again. There had to be something he could do to stop it. There HAD to be.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is where the action turns and Mike takes matters into his own hands. Have you been wondering how Mike would respond if he ever saw Tony in person? You're about to find out. Enjoy!

_11/17/86_

_Dear El,_

_After speaking to you on the radio I’m going to do it; I’m going to try to see if we can set up a way where we can all meet before Thanksgiving. I know it’s only a week, but there is too much at stake. Between what’s going on with Holly, what I told you about Hopper and your sister appearing, it’s too important to try to figure out a way to keep you safe. These people must know where you are. They must be able to channel you. We can’t leave you out for them to come after. We have to see if we can get you your powers back._

_I’m going to talk to Mrs. Byers and see if I can convince her to let us all come to see you this weekend. It’s a long drive, but it’s worth it if you’re safe. Plus we can find your sister, maybe she can help you. Maybe she can train your powers back so that you’ll be able to use them. If she won’t…maybe I’ll just come and take you myself. I know it’s risky, but it’s worth it if it can protect you._

_This is all only if it’s okay with you. I don’t mean to tell you what to do or control you. I don’t want someone else barking orders at you. I just want to make sure that you feel safe; that you feel okay. That’s the most important thing to me. If you’d rather just wait until Thanksgiving and lay low, that’s fine too._

_Write back and tell me what you think, El. I love you and I trust that we can get through all this._

_Love,_

_Mike_

11/21/86, 6:59 AM

Mike didn’t want to wait a moment longer. He didn’t think this through. Like he’d done so many times, he just trusted his instincts. He got on a bus and went.

He barely touched the money he’d earned from the video store since he started. He knew it was important to have it on the side just in case. And he made a good amount of money, combined with the money he had gotten as gifts from family the last birthday and Christmas. It would last him and El a good week. If nobody else was convinced that there was a reason to get her out of her current situation until she had sufficient protection, he’d take matters into his own hands. He grabbed a few of Nancy's clothes that she left in her room before leaving for college for El, a few outfits for himself, and a can of his mom's Aquanet (if it stung Lucas's eyes it would work for anyone), and put it all to the side to bring with him.

With precaution, of course.

He told him mom that he was going on a retreat for AV club at school. He even managed to create a convincing flyer that really made it look official. She signed it at everything. True, it wasn’t the best lie, but it worked and it got him out of the house and on a bus to Illinois. Since there were so few members, it made sense to his mom that he’d have to pay for his own transportation and that it would make sense to leave on Friday morning and make the most out of the cost of the trip. He showed her that he’d asked his teachers for the work load in advance (although he told them there was a family emergency out of state, but, because his grades were high, his parents never bothered meeting with them, so she’d never know the inconsistency). His mom was even impressed that he managed to save enough money to pay for the trip.

As far as Max, Lucas, and Dustin…he didn’t tell them anything. Yet. He knew that, if he did, they would take it badly. They would tell him to wait. They would tell him not to worry. And that simply wasn’t in the cards. That, or Max would want to come, and, that would create another rift between her and Lucas and put him in the awkward position of getting in the middle of it. No, it was best he did this on his own.

For her sake….

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Seven Days Earlier

“El? Do you copy? It’s Mike. I have something really important to tell you.”

El immediately picked up her radio, her voice rushed and urgent.

“Mike, I copy. And same. Me too.”

“What? Important? What is it?” Mike asked, wondering what on Earth could have happened to her on top of everything else.

“No…go ahead first, then I’ll tell you.”

“Okay, well…Holly…you know how I said she was acting strange?” 

“Yeah,” El replied, wondering what his little sister could have to do with anything. “Did…she tell you what’s wrong?”

“Yes. She has visions, El. She sees you. You, Mrs. Byers, Will, Nancy and…and Hop.” There was a pause. El, her heart shuddering at the sound of the very last name Mike mentioned, wondered what on Earth this could mean.

“She…she sees Hop? How?”

“That’s the thing. She says that she sees him with long hair, a long beard…she sees what seems like it could be happening now, or could be happening later. And I know she’s not making this up, because she sees stuff that makes sense. She saw you with Tony.”

“What?” El asked, legitimately surprised and somewhat embarrassed that his poor little sister saw her in an awful situation like that. “Well…I mean, does she always see what’s really happening? Does she see what’s real? Is Hop…can he be real?”

“That’s the other thing,” Mike continued, sighing deeply. “Look, remember when I told you I had something to tell you and I wanted to wait until I figured out what it was? That was it. Max…she went to the Steelworks. To kind of look around. And…she found Hopper’s watch there. El…I think he may still be alive.”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause as El felt her mind escape from her body; the surreal news of what she was hearing hit her, but not as much as the pain that Mike knew this for a few weeks already and just managed to tell her now.

“You…you knew about d…about Hop’s watch and you didn’t tell me?”

“I’m sorry,” Mike said, his voice sounding authentically apologetic and softening her resolve. “You’re right, I should have, but the thing was, I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t want you to think he might be out there if I didn’t know. But…now that Holly has these visions, I think there’s more evidence to back it up, El. And…with your powers still around somehow, maybe, I don’t know, maybe we can find him.” There was another pause, as El tried to process all of this and sat, numb, wordless. Mike sighed deeply. “El, really, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please forgive me.”

“I’m not…mad,” El said, honestly believing it. “I’m just…I’m confused.”

“Well…what was the thing you were going to tell me?” Mike asked, sincerely curious to see if there was anything else that could make sense out of all of this. 

“You…remember my sister I told you about? Kali?”

“Yeah,” Mike said, feeling himself get a little nervous as well. He didn’t like the idea of this sister; the one who urged El to do things that could get her into trouble and disrespected her wishes to avoid being a killer unless she absolutely had to. 

“She…she found me. Got a radio from a policeman and overheard the report about Tony, and she found me. She told me to come back to her.” Mike told his worry and jealousy to be quiet; he told himself not to be bossy and advise her how to deal with this. 

Then, a thought crossed his mind.

Kali…

“El…maybe that’s it.”

“What?” El asked.

“Kali…we…we all reach out for her and see if she can maybe help you to get your powers back. You said she kind of trained you to strengthen them before, right? Maybe she can train them again. So, that way you can find Hopper, and if anyone out there is trying to come after you, you can defend yourself.”

“But…she doesn’t want to help me and let me go,” El asserted. “She wants me to stay. She thinks I shouldn’t be around you and Joyce and Will. Thinks I’ve hurt you enough…that I could only make you hurt and suffer more.”

“Well, she’s wrong!” Mike insisted, feeling his temper flare up. That anyone could think that the joy that El had brought to his life and the feeling of complete fulfillment she gave him wasn’t worth sacrificing everything for filled him with a fury that he just couldn’t conceal. “And that’s why we’ll come with you! Because she’s like your sister and she should be helping you, not making you miserable.”

“She doesn’t see things that way,” El continued. “She’ll never allow me to come with all of you.”

“Well…what if we try to all get together and talk about it? Before Thanksgiving,” Mike continued. “All of us – Mrs. Byers, the party …we’ve all worked together to fight this thing before and we can work together again. Because El…” he closed his eyes to brace himself for what he was about to say, but it hurt him too much. “Holly sees…your Papa. Taking you back. Taking you away. And…if she’s seen you with Tony, and she sees Joyce on a date and Hop with long hair, and she’s seen Nancy studying and Will kissing some guy…”

“Will…what?” El asked, completely offset (and also trying to ignore the vision of Papa taking her away) Will kissed a boy? Not that it really mattered, it didn’t…but did that happen?

“That’s…a whole other thing we’ll have to ask Will about, but my point is that I think Holly somehow can see anyone who’s been in the Upside Down. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but it’s the only thing that connects every person that she’s seen. Nancy was there three years ago. Will was there. You were there. Joyce and Hopper were there. Every person she mentioned seeing has been inside. And…I don’t want to see that happen to you again. I don’t want to see you go back to him. If your powers are back, you can fight him. You can stop him…”

“I can’t,” El said, her voice started to quiver.

“El – you can do anything. I know you can,” Mike assured her.

“You don’t know,” El said, her voice shivering. “You don’t…Mike, I love you, but…you don’t know…what he’s done. Papa.”

“Well…I never wanted to push you, El. You never talked about him and I wouldn’t force you to.” El breathed heavily, and the static of the radio combined with her softest, most vulnerable voice.

“He hooked me up to wires. H-he would shock me if I didn’t listen. Asked me t-to…hurt people and move things and if I didn’t listen…I would have to go…there. To a small little closet with no windows or air and left alone for hours. I’d bang on the door – bang on it – to get out. He’d never answer. Not when he was mad. He’d punish me, Mike. All the time. And…all I wanted to do was make him happy so I wouldn’t have to go there, and I couldn’t ever – EVER – stand up to him, or he would…he would punish me and I was just so afraid to be punished.” A tear escaped Mike’s eye listening to this, imagining little El being tortured, abused and manipulated by this evil man who tried to play it off like he cared. Made her call him Papa, like there was anything loving or paternal about him at all. 

“I’m sorry, El,” Mike said evenly and strongly. “I’m so sorry you had to live like that. But now you’re stronger. You’re stronger because you know that he’s wrong. You’re not a little girl anymore. You’re not his little lab rat. You’re a powerful, smart person –you can do what you have to do to fight him.”

“It’s hard,” El said. “But…I’ll try. Can…can we ask Joyce first? Maybe Kali CAN help me; maybe I can think of a way to make her. Please.”

Mike sighed again. He wanted nothing more than to run off with her to Kali right now and resolve this, but nothing was more important than valuing her input on this since it was, indeed, her life.

“Sure El. We can.”

__________________________________________________________________

11/21/86, 10:15 AM

Mike looked closely at his wristwatch. Two more hours until he arrived at Illinois. He tried to busy himself with some of his school books that he brought in some futile attempt to make up some of the work he knew he’d miss if his stay had to be extended, but he couldn’t focus on that right now. 

He tried his best to do this the way El wanted. But Mrs. Byers wasn’t really perceptive…

_______________________________________________________________________

Four Days Ago

“You want to what?” Mike breathed in deeply at the doubtful sound in Mrs. Byers’ voice as she didn’t sound convinced that what Mike was saying merited some big reunion with everyone. 

“Given what we know…about Holly, about Hopper, about El…don’t you think we should try to find this girl and give El a chance to protect herself?”

Joyce tried to keep her mind calm and rational. Yes, she and Murray were pretty sure that Hopper was alive, but she didn’t want the kids on a wild goose chase to find him when it was quite possible he was under the captivity of the U.S. government and their attempts at saving him – especially with a group of teenagers – could go terribly awry. All Hopper would want was for El to be safe and this impulsivity was the last thing they needed.

“Mike…listen…you can’t go to pieces over what Holly has described seeing. Right now, we have no evidence to suggest that she has any real connection to this universe or that anything she’s seeing is real.”

“But Mrs. Byers,” Mike insisted. “She…happens to mention you, Will, El, Hop and Nancy? The people that were inside to the Upside Down?”

“Be that as it may…you did say she wanted your attention,” Joyce rationalized, trying to stay patient and calm and not belittle Mike’s opinion. “Logically, those people would hold your attention most. Will, El, Nancy and I are all far away, and Hopper is gone. Those are three people you’re missing and one who died, and, even as a kid, she probably knows that death is a big deal. She went to the funeral; she saw it, and it was probably the first one she’s ever seen that she remembers. Especially if you guys have spoken in her earshot and you mentioned finding Hopper’s watch.”

“But…” Mike wondered if he should mention what happened with Tony, especially since it was clear that El hadn’t. He knew he shouldn’t, nor should he mention that she happened to see Will kissing a boy, another fact that wasn’t his to reveal. Without those two pieces of evidence that what Holly was seeing was actually valid, there was no way of proving it to her. 

“Mike, I don’t mean to undermine what you’re saying. You’re a smart person and you care, and those aren’t character flaws. They’re what make you you. But nothing is more important to me that Will, El, and, yes, YOU are all safe. Running to this girl – this criminal who manipulated El once before – it’s heading for trouble. So, I’ll keep an open mind, Mike. If you see anything else strange, please, yes, let me know. If I feel that anything can be gained from maybe looking for this person, we’ll go. But right now, I think it’s best to just keep moving. Go to school, work, do what we have to do and we’ll see each other on Thanksgiving and catch up then. Okay?” Mike tried not to show his frustration and disappointment. Mrs. Byers didn’t get it, but she was a parent and she saw Will go through enough. It stood to reason that she didn’t want to push the issue.

“Okay. Thanks Mrs. Byers.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What word is this?” El asked, looking at her science textbook with Paul that afternoon. He leaned in and looked at it, then smiled that white tooth smile at her and answered.

“Germination,” he said.

“Germ…en…a..shun?” She repeated. He giggled good naturedly and tried his best to be kind and not patronizing. He just couldn’t help but find this childlike side of her incredibly cute.

“Germination. It’s...well, look at the picture. What does it look like?” El looked closely at the diagram in the picture before her. One looked like a bean; like the lima beans that Joyce made her eat and she didn’t particularly like. 

“A bean…is changing…is growing to a plant.”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Paul said, continuing. “Germination is a fancy word to describe the process of an organism, well, you know, a living thing, like a plant, changing and growing from a seed into a plant. I mean, there is a lot more to it, and we’ll break it down, but that’s pretty much what it is.”

El looked at the first little lima bean; hidden in the dirt. Alone, isolated, buried without any sun or beauty or energy. She thought of what she learned in English…about similes. Or were they analogies? She was kind of like that bean.

“Do…do they always grow?” she asked Paul, letting her finger travel over to the seed and touch it, almost wanting to connect herself to it.

“Well…no, not always. See how it grows depends on its environment. It needs the right conditions. Sun, water, the right soil…”

El flashed back to herself as a child. Did she have the right conditions? She had no sun, no warmth, no love, nothing. She was a prop; she was a tool for Papa to use like a pair of scissors or a roll of tape. And look at what she grew into – this. A girl who could barely read or spell. A girl who had to be taught everything that even little children knew. A girl who was nothing but a storage space for powers who, without those powers, was lost.

“Wh-what happens if it doesn’t get those con…di…shuns?” El asked, feeling her face get hot and afraid to look at Paul. Paul, leaning in a little closer, softened his voice a little bit.

“Jane…are we still talking about plants here?” El looked up at him, at the worried, sincere look in his eyes. How did he know what she was talking about? Was she that obvious? Was she that bad at hiding what was inside her head? Was it possible he knew more? He also must have read through her mind at that moment, because he kept talking. “I’m sorry, Jane, I don’t…I don’t want to be intrusive and you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but you know you can…talk to me, right? I mean, I’m not just your tutor. I’m…we’re friends, right?”

Friends.

Yes. She was friends with Paul. He was one of the few friends she’d made on her own, without anyone’s help, without anything weird bringing them together. 

But could she really tell him anything?

“Did something happen?” he persisted. “You know…when you were little? Something you want to talk about?”

El wasn’t sure. On one hand, she didn’t want to talk about this. Not during tutoring. On the other hand, Paul knew nothing about her powers. Not officially, although he may have guessed after what happened with Tony. And to kind of, sort of open up to someone who didn’t know all of that…maybe it would help.

“My Papa…he took me away from Mama when I was a baby,” she whispered, her eyes still focused on the dark little lima bean buried in the dirt. “Took me away from everyone. Then he…hurt her. When she tried to take me back. And he kept me all alone. He never…” she drew in a deep breath as she felt Paul’s arm extend behind her back. It wasn’t like Tony’s touch was; it wasn’t rough and intrusive and wrong. It didn’t feel like he was trying to be who Mike was. It just felt like someone knew giving her comfort, kind of like Max did. It gave her the strength to continue. “He never…hugged me or played with me or gave me toys or told me I was…pretty…wouldn’t let me be pretty.”

“What do you mean?” Tony asked, an awkward little chuckle escaping from his throat. “How on Earth could he not let you be pretty? Did he cover your face with a bag or something?” She turned to him, his white toothed smile, and wondered what he was trying to say. 

“Cut off all my hair,” she told him. She felt his hand slowly pat her back as his smile warmed. 

“That wouldn’t stop you from being pretty, Jane. You’re very pretty.”

Very pretty.

No.

This felt wrong.

Bile started to rise in her throat and all of a sudden she felt sick of this, of everyone. Did every boy in this school want to try to be her new boyfriend? She had one. She had one she loved. Why didn’t anyone respect that? Especially while she was talking about something as hard to discuss and serious as her Papa. How dare he?

“I have to go,” she said abruptly. Paul’s face fell; it changed. He looked very sorry, but El didn’t care. She felt he deserved it.

“Jane…oh my God, Jane, I’m so sorry, I was completely inappropriate.”

“Yes. You were,” El snapped, grabbing her books and hurrying out of the library.

“Jane, wait!” he called, but she hurried out of the room and tried ignoring him, wondering how she could get another tutor. She’d have to tell Joyce. She never told him about Tony because it was just too embarrassing, but this? This she would tell her. She needed a tutor. Because Papa planted his seed in a lab; a horrible, cold, lifeless lab that wouldn’t let her grow like everybody else, and now she needed to do it later. Which was hard enough. It was even harder when everyone else treated her like an object just like he did.

“Jane,” she heard Paul call, and, since he was a football player and she wasn’t, he ran in front of her and stopped her. “Jane, please – PLEASE – look at me.” El wouldn’t. Her feet were fixated on the ground and she couldn’t bring herself to look at this boy who she liked, she trusted, who didn’t listen to a word she’d told him about her past and her Papa because he was too busy lying about how pretty she was.

“Look…I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have…I know you have a boyfriend. I’m sorry if you feel I disrespected him or you. I was just being honest. If you’re afraid that this man did something to stop you from being pretty, you’re wrong. And that’s not me trying to hit on you or anything, it’s just me being a friend. I mean…do you think your friends are pretty? Does that mean that you want to date them?”

She thought of her friends. She thought all of them were pretty; or, well, whatever you’d call a boy. Handsome; that’s what Mike told her when she accidentally called him pretty, although he said that he wasn’t handsome. And that made her hurt, because she really thought he was. His dark eyes, his big smile, his perfect cheekbones, every freckle on his face. Handsome. But Paul was right. She thought Max was very pretty, but she didn’t want to date Max. Leslie was pretty too, even if she wore entirely too much makeup. So, calling someone pretty didn’t necessarily mean that you were being like Tony and you were trying to push yourself on them.

But one fact remained…

“But, I mean…I’m not,” she said, looking at her feet. “Only Mike…he’s the only one who thinks I’m pretty. And…I believe him. Like, that he thinks that I’m pretty but…well, I don’t know if I am.”

“Do YOU think you are?” El looked up at Paul, who was looking at her kindly. She’d never been asked this question. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t think about herself that way. 

“I don’t know,” she honestly replied. “Papa…never…he never made me think I was. So now I don’t know.” Paul sighed, turned away, and then looked back.

“Look…it’s not like it’s a fact or not. People think different things and different people are pretty. Things and people they love, usually. Or that they care about. And, if you love yourself, if you like who you are, then you should think that you’re pretty. I think maybe it has nothing to do with actually being pretty or not. I think maybe you’re just figuring out who you are, and what you like, and since you don’t quite know yet, you can’t decide. And that’s okay. But just…when Mike or I or anyone else tells you that you’re pretty, you have to believe it’s because, from what WE see, we like you. We like you exactly the way you are. And it’s different for us because we’re not you; you’re the one who has to know you and like you for what you are, and that can be hard, especially when you grew up with someone who didn’t let you find that person. Who didn’t let you grow. Ugh, I’m rambling and I’m so sorry, but…I hope you get what I’m saying.”

Paul WAS a good tutor, because, even when he did speak way too much, he did make sense. She did have to find out who she was. And now that she was starting to be El – not El with powers or El with Mike or El the chief’s daughter – now she was starting to like who she was more. She looked at him and nodded.

“Okay,” he continued, leaning against a locker. “So…tell me. What is one thing I need to know about YOU? Not who you love, not who you’re friends with. You.”

She stopped for a minute and thought…

“I…I like to be a good friend. I like to be there for people. It feels good. Is…does that count?”

“Sure,” Paul continued. “What else?”

“I like…I like silly love stories. On TV and in books. I like to see people like each other and kiss and stuff.” She turned a little red, and let herself giggle. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be. I mean, I never watch those shows and can’t relate, but go on.” They both laughed a little and then she continued.

“I…like math. I never thought I would but…it’s the only class that I got a B- in this term and I felt proud. And when I figure things out I really like it a lot. The rules are easier. Much easier than to write.”

“I’m so glad to hear that, and, yes, El, you’re learning math so quickly. I think give it a year or two and you’ll be really, really good at it.” This made El smile. That was another reason she did sincerely like math; because it was something that she became good at that nobody expected her to be good at. Nobody asked her to solve a problem the way they asked her to crush a can or move an object or make something fly. It’s something difficult she had to try and that she learned to love on her own.

“And…I like colorful things,” she continued. “That may sound babyish but…where…when I was little, there were no colors. Everything was…white…and when I see colors and, you know, pretty things…I feel happy.”

“That’s not babyish. It’s common. Artists, stylists, people in this world make tons of money and lots of people happy because they love color so much. Don’t be embarrassed about that.” He stood up away from the locker and smiled at her again. “It sounds to me like this seed is starting to grow, Jane. On your own. Because now you have what you need – what you didn’t have before. You have your boyfriend, you have your friends, you have me, and, well, most importantly, you have YOU. And those are good things.” He sighed deeply and looked away. “Well, again, Jane, I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable. Especially after what you went through with Tony; I shouldn’t have been so insensitive. If you want another tutor, I totally get it.”

“No,” El told him, smiling. “No, it’s…fine, Paul. Thank you…for apologizing. It did feel weird but now; I don’t know, I get it. I’m just kind of tired…do you mind if I go home?”

“Of course not,” Paul told her. “Thank you for understanding. I’m just…there aren’t a lot of people here like you, Jane. Not everyone is as nice as you are. I’m just…I’m glad to have a friend like you.” El smiled, because that certainly felt good to hear. Still, this entire session was too much. All she wanted was to go home and lie down in her room, and just let all these thoughts rest for a little.

“Thanks,” she told him. They said a quick goodbye, and El started walking home. Thinking about Papa; that man who left her in the dirt and wouldn’t give her what she needed to grow. Mike was right; she had to defend herself against him. Because if there was anything about what Holly saw that was true, he wanted to get her back. After all these years, that’s what he wanted. And she wouldn’t let him. She wasn’t a seed in the dirt anymore; she was growing, and he couldn’t just take her away from the sun and the warmth and the light that made her what she was proud to be. 

Maybe she would go with Mike to see Kali. Whether Joyce let her or not…

_____________________________________________________________________________________

11/21/86, 11:24 AM 

Mike looked at the raindrops falling against the window, colliding with one another to form a bigger raindrop until the entire huge collection of one massive drop fell to the bottom of the window never to be seen. He thought of that monster – like that collection of raindrops – full of poor victims all come together, only to disappear. Was it still out there? Was it just out of vision, like that raindrop falling below the window, or did it splatter and completely disintegrate?

Could Brenner want El because there was still danger out there? Or did he just want her to try new things, new scientific feats? She was nothing to him – an object, an experiment. She was like Dustin’s Cerebro; some THING he created that he got to use however he wanted.

Well he wouldn’t.

Mike never really cared to be one of those mindless meatheads at school, but sometimes he wished he was bigger, stronger, more powerful – that he could protect El the way she protected everyone else. That’s all he wanted in the world; was to keep this girl safe. And as much as he thought it was awesome and one of the reasons he loved her so much that she was able to defend herself and everyone else, that she was so completely badass, it broke his heart that he couldn’t flick HIS head or HIS arm and make whatever caused her hurt or pain to stop. 

But, if he couldn’t, he could take her to someone who would. And with him there, Kali had to listen. She had to cooperate.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Night Before

“You’re acting weird.”

Max saw Mike’s poor attempt at being subtle the day before, as the four of them met at the arcade to relieve themselves from some post midterm stress. They had just gotten through their last round of tests and needed to release some strain with Dig Dug. Lucas and Dustin were once again trying desperately to beat Max’s new high score, leaving Max and Mike on the side where she could finally catch him and ask him what his problem was.

“What? I’m just standing here.”

“Yeah, and you’re quiet. When the hell does that happen?” Mike sighed deeply, annoyed that he was giving himself away so easily. He never told the others about Holly. Because it involved Papa, he felt it was best to tell El first. He was hoping that he could get the whole party together to talk about everything, but, since that was out of the cards, it was going to be him and El and him and El alone. If Mrs. Byers tried to talk him out of getting together, he had a funny feeling the others would too, and, right now, El was more important. Keeping her safe was more important. Finding Hop for her was more important. The two of them took a few steps away from Dustin and Lucas, walking outside the arcade so that they would be out of earshot. 

“I’m just…tired. From tests.”

“Yeah, bullshit,” Max said. “You’ve been complaining about your tests for the last few weeks with nonstop noise; why be quiet now? When I ran into Robin at the video store she said you were taking off all weekend. Working at that store is your only weekend plan ever, so why don’t you tell me what you’ll be doing instead?” For a moment, Mike almost contemplated telling her. They were the two closest to El and it almost felt like he should. She was so deeply invested in the investigation to try to get to the bottom of what happened to Hopper and the Upside Down.

Yet, this was something he felt he had to do with El alone.

It’s not like Max didn’t deserve to be there. But the fact remained – she had her own agenda. This was about Billy largely, and, while he understood, this wasn’t about Billy. This was about El confronting the man who hurt her so long ago; it was something she didn’t need an entire circus of people to do. 

“I just…I need a weekend. It’s been a lot. It’s just…draining me.”

“Yeah, you’re a terrible liar, Wheeler.” 

“You think that’s a lie?” Mike said, raising his voice a little. “I haven’t seen my girlfriend since the summer, and that was only a week. Some pervert tried to attack her at a party and I was miles away and couldn’t do anything about it. I won’t get to see her for another whole week even though she’s hurting and she’s sad and she needs me…”

“She doesn’t NEED you, Mike,” Max asserted, rolling her eyes. “She can take care of herself. She WANTS to see you. She doesn’t NEED to see you.”

“How the hell do would you know?” Mike asked, feeling his face get hot and tired of Max’s constant habit of overstepping her boundaries. “This is exactly what you did when you broke us up in the first place.”

“When I…I wasn’t the one who broke you up. That was her, and it was over a year ago and didn’t last long, so how about getting over it?”

“I dump your ass? Yeah, that sounds a lot like El.”

“Fine – I gave her advice that she CHOSE to follow because you lied to her!”

“I was put in a corner! And I lied to her ONCE! We barely had any problems in OUR relationship, which is something you’d know very little about since you get up Lucas’s ass for everything.”

“What the hell is THAT supposed to mean?”

“It means that you and Lucas have the most explosive, ridiculous and unhealthy relationship ever, which is entirely YOUR fault, and instead of dealing with it you were too busy taking it out on El and me. Because you’re JEALOUS. Jealous that there’s another couple that could actually be HAPPY and not break up every three seconds. You pull the same crap on Dustin; made fun of him and Suzie for having the nerve to be happy and cute together. Deal with your own shit and stop taking it out on the rest of us.”

Now Mike could practically see the steam exploding out of Max’s ears. Her face was as red as her hair. He struck a nerve and he knew it.

A piece of him felt good.

“Don’t you DARE say that I am JEALOUS of El because YOU lied and you won’t take responsibility for it!”

“Take responsibility! Yeah, like you’ve really done that!”

“What the hell do I have to take responsibility for?”

“Um, I don’t know, maybe for telling El I was this horrible boyfriend when you know that I love her and I would do anything for her? For pushing her so hard to use her powers that she doesn’t even have them anymore. You made fun of Lucas for those fireworks and, if he didn’t bring them, she’d be dead. You almost KILLED her trying to treat her like some superhuman machine. But oh, no, MAX is NEVER wrong. She’s always right, isn’t she?”

“Well what about you? Like YOU take responsibility for shit yourself?”

“I told El I lied. I apologized. I meant it. It’s more than I could say for some people.”

“I’m not TALKING about El!” Max shouted, her face even a deeper shade of red than it was before. “I’m talking about ME and how you’ve treated me like shit from day one for no good reason! Did you EVER apologize for that? NO!” Mike felt himself breathe calmly; steadily. He’d kept all this in for so long and releasing it felt good, relieving. But she was bringing up something that was very well true and…well, no. He hadn’t apologized.

“You’re right,” he said, looking down, unable to face her. He took a seat on the curb outside. “I did. Thing was…back then, I didn’t want to admit it, but I really thought…I don’t know, I thought El could be dead. You don’t know what it was like, Max. We heard her scream…her scream piercing through me, and it’s kind of like we all heard that summer, only this time we turned around and…she was gone. Like she was never even there. And then everyone told us to forget her, not to mention her…and then you were there. Just some new girl. Only everyone was interested and wanted to know who you were, while they were NEVER like that with El; she only freaked them out. And that’s not your fault, and I shouldn’t have been such an asshole but…I don’t know, a piece of me thought, who the hell is she? Why should she take El’s place? And I know that’s no excuse, but…I don’t know, I was angry and I was stupid. And…I’m sorry about that.” Max seemed to have calmed down too, her face slowly fading to a lighter pink, as she sat alongside him. 

“I’m sorry, too,” she told him. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have…I was wrong to think you were just some lying piece of shit. It’s just…in my house, every guy was just…awful. And, I’m sorry for Billy, and what he dealt with, but, damn, it was the truth. He was, too. And it makes me scared, like; I don’t trust any guy. I trusted my dad more than anyone but he never stepped it up. So sometimes I just want to make sure that I’m okay, and that’s why I kind of get on Lucas for everything. I’m just so afraid he’s going to turn on me and be an asshole, but he never is, he’s just so…good and patient. And I’ve told him this so many times, and he’s so understanding. You’re right. He should dump my ass too. But…El…I saw her sad because you lied and I just thought of my mom who never stood up for herself and I had to say something. She’s just so…giving and loving and kind, and I felt like I wanted to help her stand up for herself. Her powers, though…I shouldn’t have pushed her so much. I just really believed she could do it. I hated to hear that maybe you guys thought she couldn’t. It seemed, I don’t know…demeaning.”

Mike sighed and, for the first time, tried to understand where Max was coming from. 

“I get hating demeaning stuff and I get issues with guys being shitty at home. My dad isn’t so great either,” Mike continued. “He’s like this total idiot with my mom. He never does anything sweet or romantic like get her flowers or even tell her she’s pretty or anything like that. It kind of freaks me out too; like…it took me forever to tell El I love her and it’s…it’s cause of what he’s done to me. He’s made me afraid to FEEL things. Like…like that’s not normal, like you’re not SUPPOSED to. Because he always treats feelings like they’re silly or stupid or a waste of your time. And that sucks, because I have feelings for El and…I don’t think my parents ever felt that way about each other. And what if they did, but it just, I don’t know…went away?” Max let out a laugh, both to release some thick tension and because she authentically felt amused. “What?”

“You and El are a freakin fairy tale, Mike,” Max said. “I mean…it’s almost annoying. Because that stuff isn’t supposed to be real and then you go ahead and make it real, and it just makes the rest of us look really bad. So, no, I don’t think you and El will ever be like your parents are. You’re…you’re not like most people are. You’re the first people that make me think that love is a real thing. And I kind of hate you for it.” 

Mike managed to smile at Max, which was rare; the two of them were always up each other’s backs about something. Freeing all of this felt good. Because, well, he was right. His dad taught him to repress feelings until they consumed you and made you crazy. And maybe his dad didn’t know everything. Maybe it felt good sometimes to actually say what you were thinking.

“I guess we both screwed up, huh?” Mike asked. 

“Yeah, I guess we did,” Max agreed. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Mike told her. 

“So…does that mean you’re going to tell me what’s going on this weekend?” Max asked, lightening her voice a little. He dodged her gaze, standing up and heading back inside the arcade.

“We’d better go back inside; the guys will be wondering where we are.”

“Very smooth,” Max mumbled. Her annoyance didn’t shift Mike’s view, even though he was glad they got all of that off their chest. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Max there. It was just that numbers made things complicated. And this was going to be simple. He was going to go with El to see Kali. They were going to reason with her; she had to be someone they could reason with. More people would seem like an ambush. And, yeah, Mrs. Byers would be pissed, but if she later discovered that they were able to find Hopper, maybe she’d go easy on him. Maybe…

____________________________________________________________________

11/21/86, 1:10 PM 

“I don’t know why you’re wasting your time with that Hopper girl, Richards,” Paul rolled his eyes hearing the same advice he heard on a daily basis from his friends on the football team before gym in the locker room, especially Rick Jordan, who was constantly trying to live vicariously through Paul’s popularity with ladies. 

“She’s just a friend,” Paul insisted. “She has a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, exactly. And you’re still making eyes at her like a little puppy. Move on, dude. Do you know much ass you could be getting right now as we speak? Tracy Nielsen is totally into you. I mean, hit that up!”

“Tracy Nielsen?” George Feldman asked, gesturing round shapes near his upper chest. It took great restraint for Paul not to tell them they were all a bunch of assholes, but he just laughed. It’s what he did.

“Don’t get the appeal of Hopper. I mean, she’s CUTE, but she’s no Tracy Nielsen. You and Tony won’t give that one up. He’s trying his luck right now, actually.”

Right now?

What the hell did that mean?

“What does that mean?” Paul asked, his voice changing from pleasant to a little bit darker.

“Well, let’s just say you’re not the only one with your eye on her. He’s kind of staked out that she does some studying in that stairwell by the girl’s locker room instead of going to study hall because she likes to be alone and thought he might charm her away from her boyfriend over there.”

No…

Tony wouldn’t.

He was already in trouble. He knew she could kick his ass. He knew that he was already on watch since there was a police report written and that any further attempts to hurt her would surely get him in more trouble than he already was. 

“What, are you bothered, Richards? Not for anything but Tony’s a little more…assertive than you. Nice guys finish last, bro. Haven’t they ever taught you that?”

He didn’t need reminding.

More importantly, he didn’t need to hear that, instead of backing off, Tony had been secretly stalking Jane to the point that he knew where she secretly studied instead of going to study hall. And he wouldn’t put it past him to try something with her.

“I’ve…I have to go,” Paul 

___________________________________________________________________

Mike had followed all the directions necessary and gotten himself to El’s school with no trouble. His only fear was walking into Will somewhere and having to deal with his questions. Will was his friend and he loved him, but, again, there was a problem with numbers and he needed to do this between him and El. That would be it.

It was 1:15. El was scheduled for a period of study hall. But she told him that she never actually went to the library for this, because they didn’t actually take attendance. She found a stairwell on the East side of the building near where the girl’s locker room was, and that was a perfectly safe place, because Will wouldn’t be anywhere near there.

Especially now that he knew more about him.

He shook his head; now wasn’t the time to ponder that. He was going to find El and the two of them were going to look for Kali. That was the plan, and that’s what he was going to do. 

He quietly made his way to the East building entrance and headed down the stairs.

_________________________________________________________________________

El took a seat in her usual quiet spot near the Eastern stairwell and took out her books, ready to go over her notes for the next history test. While she was improving in her other subjects, history was always a challenge for her. There were so many “obvious” facts not explained to her because she was supposed to have learned them years before. It required so much further research. Fortunately, Joyce bought her a big, condensed encyclopedia, which she’d been using to kind of catch up, as well as her dictionary. They were heavy and bulky, but they fit okay in her locker. Besides, now that she found this hiding spot, it wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as having to look up basic facts in the library where other people could see. 

It also gave her a chance to try to practice using her powers again.

She placed the encyclopedia in front of her and gazed at it. As usual, she felt a little something; a small frequency buzzing in her ears, but nothing happened. The book remained closed. She still couldn’t do it.

“I hear staring at books doesn’t help you learn any faster.”

That voice…

She knew that voice.

She looked up to see Tony – Tony who she’d managed to dodge for the last several weeks – staring at her with malice. She stood up immediately, and started reaching for her things, but he was faster than her and walked her directly into the corner of the stairwell.

“What, you thought we were finished, Hopper? You thought that little bit of fun we had at Marcy’s house was all?”

“Stay away from me,” El told him, trying to move away from him, but his arms boxed her in to the corner where she was. “You’re already in enough trouble. I’ll…I’ll go to the police, I’ll report you…”

“And say what? That I talked to you in a stairwell? Come on, here, Hopper, we’re just having a friendly chat.” He reached his hand toward her face, and she shoved it away.

“Don’t touch me!” She shouted. “Don’t come near me, just…stay away…”

“Not until you tell me how you did it,” He said, his face getting close to hers and his voice sounding angrier and far more intense than it ever had. “How did you – puny, cute little thing like you – throw me across the room like that?”

“I was…mad…” El said, still trying to inch her way out, but he laughed and, for a second time, held her hands tightly in his wrists and trapped her alongside him.

“That’s bullshit and you know it, Hopper. No way could a little thing like you throw me around. But..hey, if you want to get rough, maybe I’ll be into that,”

“HEY, ASSHOLE!” A squeaky voice piped from behind Tony – a loud one that made El’s heart suddenly feel lighter and free. One that she could barely believe she was hearing.

The next part happened so quickly it was hard to even imagine it was real. 

Tony turned around and El heard the sound of something spraying. It was the same sound that she’d heard at Dustin’s surprise party when he sprayed hairspray right in Lucas’s face…

Which is exactly what Mike was doing to Tony right now – only while Dustin stopped, this seemed to go on forever. It was almost like Mike was spraying the entire bottle into Tony’s eyes.

Tony moaned loudly and fell, and, the next moment, Mike was on top of him, hitting every part of him that he could get his hands on, his face animalistic and angry in a way that El had never seen before. The closest was when Mike tried attacking Lucas. He wasn’t a strong guy and El knew that, but, with Tony disarmed, Mike’s fists were able to make loud smacking sounds against Tony’s face without much of a fight back, as Tony was squealing in pain, his eyes burning terribly. 

“YOU STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER, DO YOU HEAR ME?” Mike screamed so loudly and angrily that his voice was barely recognizable, in between punches and grunts from Tony. “Don’t you TOUCH HER, don’t you even go NEAR her again, you goddamn piece of SHIT!”

Ordinarily El would tell Mike to stop, but she was still so shaken that Tony would have cornered her again that she felt this was what he deserved. He needed this. And Mike – she was always his protector. To have HIM protect HER felt…different.

“GET OFF OF ME, YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

“Not a chance, asshole!” As Mike let in his last few punches, blood from Tony’s nose starting to stain his fingers, He stopped and leaned down right into Tony’s face, which was burning from the spray in his eyes. “If I EVER hear that you lay another finger on her again, I swear to God I’ll blind you for real, do you hear me?”

“Fuck you.”

“DO YOU HEAR ME?” Mike asked, landing another punch directly on his mouth. Tony shuddered, as El, leaned against the wall in shock, looked wordlessly at the sight in front of her. At that, Mike ran over to El, took her books and grabbed her hand.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and the two held hands tightly and ran up the stairs, leaving a bruised, bloody Tony in their wake. El lead him up the stairs and out the nearest exit, and hurried over to the bleachers by the track, where they ran underneath so they could be alone. When they were out of sight, they stopped, catching their breath. Her hand was still firmly on his. He had a look of shock on his face, like he could hardly believe that he just did precisely what he did.

“I’ve…I’ve never done anything like that before,” he panted. “I just…I can’t believe I…”

But El didn’t let him finish. She grabbed him and captured his breath some more as she held him tightly and pressed a deep, long kiss to his mouth, releasing the longing for him that consumed her in the weeks since they’d seen each other last. He returned the kiss, his arms firmly around her, landing softly on her lower back, as she extended hers behind his neck and pressed her lips deeper and deeper into his. They separated, their foreheads still connected, and El looked into his eyes, which were mere inches from hers.

“Thank you,” she told him. “For taking care of me.”

“Always,” Mike whispered back, leaning in to kiss her again and feeling her lips curl into a smile against his.

“Does it…hurt?” El asked. “Your hands?”

“Like a bitch,” Mike answered honestly. El reached behind her and looked at his hands, raw, red, and swollen. 

“We have to get you ice,” El told him. Mike held her hand in his own and smiled.

“We’ll do it on the way…we have to get out of here. El, there’s no time to waste. Mrs. Byers was no help and you need protection. From Tony, from Brenner, from everyone. The only way we’re going to get through to Kali is if we do it together. You and me.”

“J-just you and me?” El asked, the thought of the two of them doing anything alone making her feel both elated and extremely frightened.

“It’s the best way,” Mike told her quietly. “We can’t have fifteen voices in our ears telling us what to do. It’ll just be you and me, and maybe we can talk her into training you. If you’re up to it, El. It’s up to you. I mean, Joyce will be mad…but if we can find Hopper, she’ll understand. She has to.”

El looked at Mike, who sacrificed everything and threw himself at a bully who could readily have beaten him to a bloody pulp were it not for the hairspray that he thought to throw into his backpack for protection. He was right. Holly wasn’t spewing nonsense; she saw Tony, she saw Will…with whoever…Hopper was probably somewhere out there. And so was Papa. If Mike could get over his victim complex and finally stand up to someone, so could she. 

They’d do it together.

“Yes.”  
________________________________________________________________________

Paul hurried to the stairwell that he’d heard the other guys mention a million times but had never been to. He was afraid for what he’d see; would El attack Tony again? Or worse, would he have overpowered her this time?

Nothing prepared him for what he did see, though.

He arrived at the spot to see Tony, bloody and bruised, holding his hands to his eyes in pain on the floor, groaning.

What the hell?

“Tony? What the hell?”

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

Kill who?

What was he talking about?

“Who? You seeing people, Tony? There’s nobody here.

“That boyfriend of Hopper’s. Little shit sprayed something in my eyes and knocked his pathetic little fists into my face,” he answered. 

Boyfriend?

He was here?

He thought he lived miles and miles away and wasn’t coming back until Thanksgiving…that’s what he’d overheard from his bits of eavesdropping on Leslie and Will, anyway. What the hell was he doing here?

(Although his beating the shit out of Tony put him in Paul’s good graces immediately.)

“Well why would he do that?” Paul asked, standing above him and looking down in disgust. “What the hell did you do to her this time?”

“We were just talking…”

“Like you were talking when you had her in a corner in Marcy’s bedroom, huh? Who are you fooling, dickhead?”

“Fuck off, just help me up.”

Paul shook his head and gave him one look of disgust before walking away. He was curious to find out what this Mike guy was doing here and shake his hand for attacking the biggest jerk in the entire school. Will might know; he seemed far more approachable than Leslie, and Paul happened to know that he had art at this time, which wasn’t that far away from the stairwell. He went up a few flights and peeked his head into the art room, noticing Will in deep concentration in something he was drawing with charcoal. He coughed a bit, hoping to get his attention, and, sure enough, Will turned to him.

He had a look of surprise in his eyes; like he was startled that someone like Paul would be talking to him. Paul couldn’t help but find it a little humbling and intriguing. Will was a cool guy; why would he feel that way?

He gestured for Will to join him in the hallway. Will turned to the teacher and asked what seemed to be if he could use the bathroom. He quickly went outside with Paul.

“Paul…what’s up?” Will asked nervously. 

“Hey Will, listen…your friend Mike. Why’s he here right now?” Will’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, like this was brand new information.

“He’s not…he won’t be here until Thanksgiving. He’s in Hawkins miles away.” 

“Well…that’s confusing because then who just beat the shit out of Tony downstairs where Jane usually sits for her study hall session? I just saw him bloody and with his eyes practically sealed shut.” Will’s eyes grew wide and puzzled, and also a bit afraid.

“Wow. Okay, Paul…nothing you just said makes any sense. Mike has never beat the shit out of anyone. I don’t think that he could beat the shit out of a fly.”

“Well, he sprayed something into his eyes and then punched him in the face when he was disarmed apparently, which means he’s here and Jane is with him.”

“Hairspray,” Will mumbled. Paul couldn’t conceal his confusion at this.

“Did you just say…”

“Our friend accidentally sprayed our other friend with hairspray and almost blinded him. He must have thought of it from that; disarmed Tony with that and then beat him up. Holy crap, I can’t believe that MIKE did that…”

“But why is he here? Is everything okay?” Will looked at Paul, and the two froze in a moment. Something about the other’s eyes was almost magnetic; pulling them each in the direction of one another. It was weird; almost electric. Neither had ever felt anything like that before.

But then Will went back to Earth.

“I…I have no idea. We have to find them.”

And they looked. But they wouldn’t. Because, at that moment, El and Mike were headed to the local bus station to take a bus to the nearest town outside of Chicago, which is precisely where Kali had no idea she’d be seeing them.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now we're starting Mike and El's solo journey to find Kali and try to train her powers back, and everyone else worrying and pondering where they could be! Enjoy! Thanks for your readership and all of your kind comments! I love them!

_11-18-86_

_Dear Mike,_

_I thote about what you said and I think that you are right. We have to find Kali. It is the only way. Only I do not think that Joce will let us. I think it may just have to be us. And that is kind of scarey but I am scared to wate. I do not want Papa to find me and hurt me again. I realey think that I have powers but I just cant get them to work and maybe if Kali knows that Papa can get me she will help because she hates Papa and she will want me to protect my self. I am just scared that she will say something meen to you. She made me relly sad the other day when she said that you cood die and it wood be my falt. I love you the most and I dont want you to die for me. I no you will say that you want to but I do not want it._

_Just plees tell your mom something so that she will not get scard because I don’t want to scare your mom. Joyc will be scared and she will probably take away my sopes for a week but it is worth it if we can find Hop._

_Please be careful, Mike. You are my hole heart. I love you._

_Love, El_

On the bus ride to Kali's city, Mike read El’s note to him that he kept in his backpack and let her nap. Her head rested comfortably on his shoulder, the soft feeling of her hair brushing against his arm. He just couldn’t get over the feel of the girl that he loved leaning against him for real. He had longed for it so long, and, at this moment, he savored the soft scent of her hair, the warmth of her cherub cheek against his shoulder and the feel of her petite form underneath his arm, which rested gently around her. He periodically leaned down and softly kissed the top of her head, just because she was there and he could. As she was falling asleep she’d squeeze his hand back when he did, her perfect face gently forming a smile. While she drifted off to sleep, she lay still and peaceful in his arms.

But he knew she was scared.

Joyce would kill him and this probably wasn’t smart, but if Brenner was out there and Holly saw El with him, it wouldn’t be long before he got his hands on her, and that was the last thing that Mike needed to fear. Her powers were there somehow; removed for some reason she couldn’t understand, but, if anyone could get them back, it was another lab subject.

He didn’t want to admit it, either, but he was scared to meet Kali, too. He didn’t have the feeling that his presence would be welcome. Still, El was soft inside and easy to manipulate. He needed to be there with her to keep her strong. She shouldn’t have to do this alone.

El shifted and the movement caused his hand to rub against the vinyl seat cover behind him, which made him gasp as quietly as he could. The pain on his hands was incredible, even after icing them. He still couldn’t believe that he had actually beaten someone up. He had never in his life spoken to anyone like that, let alone punched anybody. But seeing that disgusting pig trapping El in a corner did something to him that he couldn’t explain; struck a match that set him on fire and made him pull out that hairspray he brought just in case he needed it with a speed so quick that he couldn’t even process what he was about to do before he did it.

He hoped El wouldn’t have to pay for his impulsive behavior. That was the last thing he wanted. 

She shifted a bit, her eyes opening, and she gave him a soft look.

“Hey,” she said, smiling her beautiful, dimpled smile that he loved to see.

“Hey,” he replied, rubbing her arm. “You okay?” 

“Yeah,” El assured him. “You? How are your hands?”

“As painful as you’d expect when you punch a head made of solid wood,” Mike replied, taking a minute to look at them. They weren’t as big and swollen as they were before, but they were red, and definitely painful.

“I hope you feel better,” El told him, taking his hand and reaching it over to her mouth to kiss it. He smiled at her. She could be completely adorable and she didn’t even know it.

“So…what are you going to do? Are you going to report him?” El shrugged.

“Don’t know if I should. I don’t want you arrested for beating him up.”

“He had hairspray in his eyes. He has no way of describing me to anyone,” Mike said, giving her a smile. “Plus there was no way of proving you were there, either. He’s the one with a record on his hands, not you and definitely not me. Besides, they can’t arrest me. I’m only 15. Most importantly, he deserved it.”

“He did,” El agreed, looking out the window. “I just don’t want you to get in trouble.” Mike placed his hand under her chin and turned her to face him.

“Hey – don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’d do anything to help you, El. Besides, it’s about time. You’re the one always protecting everyone else. You know you’d kick ass for me any time. Hell, you threw him across the room, didn’t you?”

“I wish I knew how,” El said, her eyes looking sad and frustrated. 

“You’ll figure it out,” Mike told her. “I…I have a good feeling about it.” El’s smile almost resembled laughter, making Mike smile too. “What?”

“No you don’t,” she told him. “Friends don’t lie.”

Mike sighed, squeezing her hand in the position that hurt his hand the least.

“Okay, maybe I don’t. But she hates Brenner, right? So…we’ll tell her this is the way to stop him. She’ll have to see reason.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“What do you mean, El’s missing?” Joyce gave Will a frantic look, not even acknowledging the stranger who stood alongside him. Her eyes went through him like daggers and she looked ready to explode. “Will, what was my one rule for you and El at school? My one rule?”

“Watch out for each other, but, Mom…El’s in a different class than I am. I couldn’t…”

“You need to make sure she gets to where she needs to be. Why are you saying she was in some abandoned stairwell when she was supposed to be in study hall?”

“I have no idea, Mom!” Will exclaimed. “I honestly and completely don’t know, and it’s not my fault. I’m just as surprised by this as you! Paul said…”

“Paul…is that her tutor? Did she go off with him somewhere and…”

“Paul is me,” said the young man next to Will, awkwardly stepping into the conversation. “Jane’s tutor…who’s El?”

“Nickname,” Will and Joyce said at the same time. Then Joyce turned to Paul and tried to calm herself a bit.

“Paul..yes, hi. I’m…sorry I’m like this, it’s just…it’s very important that we find where E-…where JANE is. Do you know anything about where she could have gone?”

“Well, there’s this Tony guy who…you probably heard what happened at the Halloween party.” Joyce turned from Will to Paul and back to Will again, her nerves shot.

“The Halloween party? No. WILL!”

“It wasn’t my place to tell you!” Will shouted, annoyed at Paul for bringing that up.

“Tell me what? Who’s Tony?”

“Tony…cornered Jane at the party and tried to...do things to her. Inappropriate things that a boy shouldn't do to a girl who doesn't want to do them,” Paul awkwardly volunteered. “I tried to stop him, but Jane beat me to it and somehow threw him across the room.” Joyce, speechless, looked at Will for a moment, her temper starting to flare up.

“Can I…see you…in the other room? Please?” A lump formed in Will’s throat as the two of them walked into the back room. He knew this was a futile attempt at privacy. The apartment wasn’t that big and his mom was very loud.

She closed the door and turned on him.

“Do you mean to tell me that some guy assaulted El at this party, her powers came back, and you told me NONE of this?”

“It’s El’s story to tell, Mom, not mine…”

“El is a fifteen-year-old girl who is in a lot of danger if anyone finds out about her powers, and she was entrusted to me. It’s my job to keep her safe. I can’t do a very good job of it if we’re going to start keeping secrets in this place like I’m a prison warden and not her guardian.”

“Right, Mom, because you haven’t been keeping secrets too.”

“What secrets?” Will’s face red, his heart on fire, his patience tested by being blamed for El who he had absolutely no control over, especially by his mom who had been so weird herself lately, shut his inhibitions off like a light switch.

“Where do you go at night and come back in the morning? You leave here and say you’re going to take a walk or just a drive and you don’t come back in the morning. I’m not 7, Mom. I’m not STUPID. Are you seeing someone? What are you DOING?” Joyce, dumbfounded, felt her face go red.

“Don’t you play that card with me, young man. I am the adult here and I do NOT owe you ANY explanations regarding where I am.”

“You are my MOTHER so, yes, you DO owe me explanations, especially since you just said it’s your job to keep me and El safe.” 

“That is something that I will tell you when the time is right; for now, we have to think. Where is El? Did she say anything to you about where she could possibly be?” Will shook his head, thinking.

“No. She’s been…quiet all week. I mean, she’s always quiet but quieter than usual.”

“This Tony…does she LIKE him?”

“After he tried to force himself on her? No. She’s NOT with him, trust me.”

“Do you think he could have taken her somewhere?”

“No, because Paul saw him. He was badly beaten up. Apparently by Mike.”

Joyce stopped. She sat frozen to the spot, the conversation she had with Mike earlier in the week immediately replaying in her mind. He wanted to take her to Kali…to her sister. Because of what Holly said. There’s no WAY he could have come on his own, could he?

“Mike…he…he wanted to take her to Kali.”

“Kali?” Will asked. He didn’t have any idea who that was; there were some conversations that El had exclusively with Mike and didn’t fill the others in on. This was one of them.

“Her…her sister.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________

“Are you sure this is it?” Mike asked, looking at is map and at the empty warehouse in front of them. El double checked the address on the paper that Kali had given her a few weeks ago, then back up at the warehouse.

“Thirty-seven Hornfeld Drive. That’s here right?” Mike looked at the street number, at the warehouse in front of him, and nodded.

“This is it,” he said curiously. It looked completely abandoned. The entire area had an uncomfortable, unsafe feel to it, as though it was a place forgotten and only frequented by people who had nowhere else to go; people who caused or drew trouble. It was almost dark already. They left at 2:00 and now, after a two- hour drive and a half an hour walk, it was 4:30. 

He didn’t know how comfortable he felt being in this area after dark. Not without El’s powers. He had his hairspray still but used practically the whole bottle on Tony.

“Should we go inside?” Mike asked. El looked at the warehouse nervously and nodded. They circled the perimeter of the building until they found a door that was locked. El tried, just to try, to open it, but, again, her lack of powers failed her, so Mike suggested they continue to look for a crack in a window. Sure enough, they found one, and Mike pushed the glass over so that they could crawl in.

The warehouse was musty and damp. It didn’t look inhabitable. He couldn’t imagine that Kali and her crew of friends could have survived in this place.

“They’re not here,” Mike told her, almost hoping for an excuse to leave this eerie place. El shook her head.

“They wouldn’t be in front,” El told him. “They want to stay hidden. We have to go further.” They walked the full distance of the first floor and didn’t see anything, so they tried to go up the stairs and try the same route. As they got to one of the corner, back rooms, they found a rare closed door.

“This is it,” El told him. She turned to him before placing her hand on the door knob and turning to him. He nodded at her, and she quietly let the door open, waiting for someone to come over to them and do something. 

Nothing happened.

She walked further in to see a messy room with mattresses scattered all over the floor. There was a big table in the front with papers all over it. She cautiously walked in that direction.

“Hello?” She called, looking around, Mike’s hand firmly in hers as they approached the table to see what was on top. She saw a series of pictures and articles. There was a man – a middle aged, bearded man that she recognized. From years ago…

_“Make them a little tighter, Seamus.”_

_The man abided by Papa’s request. As El was sitting in a table alongside a huge machine that she was sure was full of those shocks that would hurt her if she was bad, Papa was asking this man to make her as uncomfortable as possible. She knew why. He was warning her. He meant business. She would do what he said or he would hurt her._

_“Uncover the tank, Seamus,” Brenner instructed, and there was a mouse – a little, frantic, white mouse, running all over in clear fear. El could see him shaking. She knew what she would be asked to do. She’d been asked to do it before. But this mouse seemed particularly frightened and that always made it much more difficult._

_“Now, Eleven,” Papa said evenly. “We’re going to continue the tests we started the other day with a new mouse. I would like you to lift it, please.”_

_Eleven looked at the mouse in concentration. Lifting it would be okay. She focused, her eyes on the mouse, looking at her in sheer terror. She felt a small frequency envelope her and, as she narrowed her eyes, the mouse was levitated into the air. It was floating mid tank, wildly flailing its little legs everywhere._

_“Good,” Papa continued. “Now I want you to bind its feet together so that it won’t move so much.”_

_El looked back at the mouse, starting to squeak now. Those little squeaks hit her like daggers in her heart. She did as she was told, because binding its feet together wouldn’t hurt it terribly. Maybe it would calm and relax it._

_Its legs were bound together, and it started squeaking louder, shaking its head._

_“Excellent,” Papa continued. “Now…I need you to stop its heart.”_

_Stop its heart._

_But that would mean it would…_

_“Yes, Eleven. Many mice have died, but it’s for the sake of helping people like us to learn more about what we can do with our minds. Trust me, if you do this, it will hurt this mouse far less than the snake we’ll feed it to if you don’t.”_

_El looked at the mouse, and, for a moment, it was almost as if the mouse was looking back at her. Its beady eyes almost pleaded with her to stop._

_Shaking, she couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t do it. She breathed in, tried to rethink, tried to think of what Papa just said, but nothing came. She hung her head down in defeat._

_“The switch, Seamus.”_

_A jolt of electricity pulsed through her and El wailed in pain. It wasn’t a terrible lot; just enough to startle her into compliance. But it wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last._

_El looked over to the man, turning the switch off as though he hadn’t just injured a ten-year-old girl. As though this was just something he was supposed to do…_

“They went after him. This man,” El told Mike. “I know him. He worked with Papa. He hurt me…probably hurt Kali too. This…this is their trail.” She looked at the articles on him. He had apparently made it very far in the science community since he left the lab, earning awards and recognitions. His wife, a big, meaty woman with huge hair and extravagant clothes, stood alongside him. Did she know who he had to hurt to get those honors and awards?

“Went after him? To kill him?” Mike asked. El turned to him and nodded.

“It’s what they do.”

“Well…is there any hint anywhere here about where they could have gone? Maybe we can find them there. Maybe they’ll be more likely to listen to you in public.” They looked around the desk and El picked up a flyer. 

“Science Olympiads Con-fe-rence in Ohio…it’s tonight. He’s a speaker.”

“If they’re going after him tonight it’s probably AFTER this conference thing,” Mike told her. “They may not be back until tomorrow. Unless you think they’ll stay for the weekend.”

“They never stay,” El told him. “They kill and leave.” The two of them looked at the paper trail in front of them, Mike’s eyes on her cautiously. He often wondered what went on in her head when she thought back to the lab, hoping that she would confide in him, but, sometimes, he also imagined that there were things she needed to keep sacred. Because they just hurt too much.

“So…what should we do?” Mike said. “Do you want to stay here and wait?”

“No,” El replied quickly. “Don’t want them finding us here. I’d rather…I’d want to come in when they’re here and it doesn’t look like we came in without them here.” 

Mike nodded; she had a point. It was already getting dark. They had to find a place to sleep for the night, and the street in an area like this wouldn’t do. He thought back to the area where they got off the bus. Yes; that was more crowded, a bit safer.

“We need to go back to the bus depot and find a place to sleep,” Mike told her. “It’s getting dark and I don’t think it’s a good idea to be in this area at night.”

“A…place to sleep.”

“Yes. A hotel. We passed a few back by the bus. I brought money, El. It should be good for the night if we need it.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Mike?” Dustin looked around his house, perplexed, not expecting a phone call from Will from Illinois. Mike was out of school that day, which he didn’t think was so weird since he didn’t look so hot the day before, but he was surprised to hear Will suggest that he’d somehow gotten all the way to Illinois on his own.

“Yeah,” Will answered, cautiously looking at his mom talking to Paul in the other room through a crack in his bedroom door and speaking softly so that they couldn't hear him. “Apparently, he came here and beat the crap out of Tony and that’s the last we saw El. She hasn’t come home. I’m afraid to call his house because I don’t know what kind of story he cooked up and I don’t want to freak his mom out if…”

“Wait, pause…rewind,” Dustin said, leaning against his kitchen counter in disbelief. “Mike – Mike WHEELER – beat the shit out of some big bully?”

“Trust me, it surprised me too,” Will answered. “But he actually used your hairspray idea, stung his eyes, and then punched him in the face repeatedly.” Dustin paused for a moment, dumbfounded.

“Nice,” he said. “Just…wow. Why didn’t I think of that? Still…that’s not like Mike at all.”

“Yeah, well…” Will looked for a moment at Paul and quickly away, suddenly realizing something that Mike and Lucas and Dustin had been probably thinking for years and that he never quite understood. “When you have feelings for someone and they get hurt, it makes you crazy. If someone did something like that to Suzie…”

“They’d be dead where they stood,” Dustin finished. 

“Exactly,” Will continued. “But…my mom…he called her a few days ago and said that Holly said a bunch of stuff to him about having visions. Like of El being taken back to that lab and that guy who used to abuse her forcing her back. Did he say any of that to you?”

“No,” Dustin answered, his mind blown by all the secrecy that had been going on in their party in the last few weeks. “I mean…last I heard about Holly, he said she’s been spying on him all the time and that it was annoying him. He never said anything about her having visions or anything like that. Look…Will, do you need us there? I can beg Steve to borrow some money and get on a bus with you guys one, two, three. Just say the word.”

Will looked over at Joyce, unsure of how to answer.

“Mom…you think they should come here and try to help figure this out?”

“No,” Joyce insisted. “I feel bad enough for Mike’s poor parents; I don’t need more guilt on my head.”

“Dustin…”

“I heard,” Dustin quietly muttered. “But it’s not out of the question. Let me talk to Max and Lucas and see if we can figure something out. Just hang tight. If I hear anything, I’ll call you, okay? Keep your radio on. We may go to use Cerebro”

“Sure,” Will continued. “Good luck then.”

“You guys, too,” Dustin told him. “I’ll talk to you later, promise. Keep us posted.”

“You too,” Will said. Dustin said his goodbyes to Will and hung up the phone, running to go get his radio.

“Lucas? This is Dustin. Do you copy?” Silence. Dustin sighed deeply. This was not the time for Lucas and Max to dodge him to have their traditional Friday afternoon alone time that he’d figured out they had on a weekly basis when they wouldn’t answer their radios. “Lucas? Max, I know you’re there too. Stop sucking face, this is a code red. Mike and El are missing. Over.”

There was a click and Lucas, sounding somewhat out of breath, picked up.

“Dustin? It’s me…what are you talking about?”

“Mike…he went to Illinois, beat the shit out of Tony, and now he and El are missing. Oh, and he asked Mrs. Byers about going to find El’s sister because Holly’s having visions.”

“Slow down, Dustin,” Max said, taking the radio. “Start from the beginning and explain this clearer.”

“I will…you guys come over here and we’ll talk.” There was another brief pause, as Lucas and Max exchanged confused looks.

“We’ll be right there.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Here we go,” Mike said, grabbing the door key for the room he just secured for the night. El, who was hiding in the bushes behind a parking lot, let Mike do all the talking at the front desk. The man working there gave him a funny look; what was a kid that age doing at a hotel? He softened, however, when Mike very obviously displayed his bruised hands and said he just needed a safe space for the night. He almost looked alarmed; asked if Mike needed to call anyone. Mike feared that he would call the police and have them come to collect him, so he simply gave a fake name and address, said that that was where he would be returning the next day, and offered an additional ten dollars for the room for the night. That seemed enough to satisfy the owner of the hotel, who gave him a list of instructions and directions to the room.

As soon as he left the front desk, and out of the worker's field of vision, he gestured to El. She hurried over to him.

“Why couldn’t I come with you?” El asked. Mike sighed. This was always uncomfortable for him to discuss; he knew that Joyce finally explained everything to her, but social conventions – insinuations and appropriate behaviors – were things she was just starting to learn about.

“He…he may have gotten the wrong idea, you know? Thought we were getting a room for…you know, inappropriate reasons.”

“In…appropriate?”

“Like…Erica Kane and that Jeremy guy on All My Children. You know…when they…do what Joyce talked to you about?”

“Have sex?” El asked abruptly, and hearing her innocent voice say that did something to Mike’s pulse that he couldn’t explain. His entire face flushed red as he dropped the key on the floor and bent down to pick it up.

“Yes,” he answered. “Sometimes when people get a hotel room…you know, that’s what people think they’re going to do.”

“Oh,” El said softly, also turning red. “But…we’re just going to sleep, right?”

“Yes, of course,” Mike answered. “That is why we need the room, El. That’s exactly what we’re here to do.” He grabbed the key again, eager to change the subject as fast as possible. “But it’s still early, so maybe I can get some snacks from the vending machine and we can watch TV or something. You know, just relax a little. That sound good?” El smiled, also relieved to have changed the subject, and Mike once again felt himself grow weak at the sight of her beautiful dimples. The door opened and they walked inside. 

For a pretty inexpensive room, it wasn’t bad. True, there was one bed. Mike would take the floor; it seemed like the right thing to do. It was small but looked clean and had the essentials; a television, a bathroom, and, most importantly, safety from whatever was going on in this strange city.

“Okay, so hang tight here,” Mike told her. “I’ll pick up some snacks and I’ll be right back.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I knew something weird was going on! I knew it!” Max paced back and forth in Dustin’s bedroom while the three of them started thinking about where he could have possibly gone. Lucas gave her one of his looks that warned Dustin an argument was about to happen.

“Why didn’t you say anything, then?” Lucas asked. 

“Gee, Lucas, I don’t know!” Max shouted. “Maybe because every single time I suggest I suspect something you shut me down!”

“That’s not true!” Lucas argued.

“Okay, cut the bullshit!” Dustin shouted, looking angrily from one to another. “Seriously, guys, I’m sick to death of your constant fighting. Mike and El are MISSING. Can you get over yourselves and your immature tug of war for five seconds and focus?” The two of them looked awkwardly at each other and then at Dustin. He was right. This wasn’t the time to argue. 

“Fine,” Max said, taking a deep breath and sitting. “So…let’s think about what we know. We know that we found Hop’s watch at Steelworks. We know that Holly mentioned having visions of some kind. We also know that El’s powers came back weirdly when she threw Tony off of her. Kali…El told me about her. She was at the lab with her; they aren’t real sisters but they called each other sisters. She wanted to get back at all of the people at the lab through some kind of vigilante justice. She’d go after them and kill them. But why are they thinking of her right now?”

“Where did she live? Illinois?” Lucas asked.

“Yeah; Chicago,” Max continued. “But who knows if she’s in the same spot? It’s not like we can just go to Chicago and find them. Even if we could, I'd have no clue where to start. El didn’t talk about it too much; I think it really bothered her.”

“If it bothered her, why would she go looking for her?” Lucas asked.

“To get her powers back,” Dustin said. “That’s what Will was saying. Mike told Mrs. Byers that they thought Kali might be able to help them. And then he said that Holly had visions…that she saw El in the lab and that Brenner captured her again. Mike probably thought that if El got help from Kali to get her powers back, that she could fight him off or something.”

“But that’s so impulsive,” Max sighed, placing her hands in her head. “I mean, this girl…she was a criminal. She went and killed people for vengeance. Is Mike naïve enough to really believe that El’s going to go marching up to this girl, get her powers back and the girl is going to just let her go? What, because he got lucky and he miraculously managed to beat up Tony, he thinks he can take on an army of killers?”

“She let her go the first time,” Dustin reminded them. Max shrugged. That was certainly true. 

“I just wish I knew where they WERE,” Max said. “I mean…I hope they’re not sleeping on the streets of Chicago for the night.”

“Mike had a good amount of money saved,” Dustin reminded them. “Maybe he got them a hotel room for the night.” Max and Lucas exchanged looks and then looked at Dustin in surprise. “What? Come on guys, it’s Mike and El! Get your minds out of the gutter.”

“Last I checked, they were still teenagers. With hormones,” Lucas reminded him

“Well, just because you two have dirty minds doesn’t mean that Mike’s forgotten his manners,” Dustin reminded them. “When Suzie stayed over, she was in the other room and I was a perfect gentleman.”

“In your mom’s house,” Max teased. “If you were in a hotel room…”

“I’d be perfectly polite,” Dustin argued. Then he looked away. “Although…not to say I’d go THERE, you know…but the idea of being alone…of having no parents there…”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The hotel room was peacefully quiet except for the hum of the television set and the soft sounds of El chewing the chips and M&Ms Mike gave her. He gave her possession of the remote control since television wasn’t his thing anyway. They sat cross legged on the bed, leaning against its backboard, his arm firmly around her as she leaned snugly into him. He would turn his attention to her more than he did to the television. Everything she did – from searching for the green M&Ms first because they were her favorites to taking hamster sized nibbles out of her potato chips – was adorable. He missed all those little things about her. How truly lovable and sweet she was in all of her gestures, actions, and words without even knowing it. At one point, she turned and saw him smiling at her, and smiled back.

“What?” she asked, wiping her mouth. “Do I have chocolate on my face?” She felt the soft, soothing vibration of the laughter in his chest from her arm, which leaned against his frame, and couldn’t help smiling back.

“You’re just so cute,” he told her. “You even look cute eating M&Ms. How do you do that?” She turned red and looked down. She certainly didn’t think she was cute, so she had no idea how to answer that.

“I…I don’t know,” she said. He moved one hand from behind her back to her hair, where he placed a stray lock behind her ear, and then moved his other hand to the opposite side of her face, both hands softly angling her face toward him.

“I missed your face,” he told her, his eyes looking at every part of it and taking her in completely. “You’re so pretty, El.” El angled herself toward him, placing her hands on his shoulders, smiling that sweet smile of hers.

“Missed your face too,” she told him. She reached one hand over and placed it against the side of his face, her thumb gently rubbing against his freckles, sending shivers up his spine. He closed his eyes, the nerve endings in his face doing something to him that was hard to even process. While his eyes were closed, he felt her lips on his. 

He kissed them back; slowly, gently. He forgot how amazing it felt to kiss her like this, her smooth lips slowly crashing into his with his hands softly caressing her hair and moving absent mindedly to her shoulders and hands. The kiss got deeper, and neither one of them, magnetically attracted to the other, felt any desire to stop.

This was usually the part where Hopper interrupted; mentioned the three-inch minimum. But Hopper wasn’t here. The door was closed and locked.

Nobody was here. 

It was just them. 

Her arms eagerly wrapped around his him, and the combined force of her surprisingly strong pull and gravity brought them both into lying position. Laying side by side, grasping desperately for one another, their arms were firmly fixed around each other’s waists before rapidly moving all over the other’s face, hair, back…it was heaven. Was it ever this good? There was something different this time. It was still sweet, soft, affectionate – but there was a pull, a greater force practically welding them together, and, for the first time, their bodies lay directly alongside each other, their arms and hands desperately holding on to each other as though they were surgically connected and separation would create a tear that would bleed them out. The warmth of their closeness, chest to chest, hip to hip, captivated them, and it was sheer nirvana.

“I missed you,” El whispered softly in between kisses, her breath heavy from the loss of air they gladly imposed upon themselves. 

“I missed you, too,” Mike said, continuing to kiss her, moving from her lips to her face, making a soft little trail of pecks from her ear down to her chin and then meeting her back at her lips. Her breath drew in quickly and she made a little noise; a soft little whimper that drove him absolutely mad and only resulted in kissing her with greater enthusiasm. She returned the gesture, stopping to look at him, kissing the top of his head, the tip of his nose, and then his mouth again. Giggling and snuggling tightly, they took turns, exploring the other with light, sweet kisses, eventually resulting in Mike landing his mouth softly on the spot where her neck met her shoulder.

Then she jumped.

Their faces flushed, their hair disheveled, their breath ragged, they both stopped abruptly as a deep, frightened sigh escaped from her mouth and it occurred to him – that’s where Tony kissed her. He’d reminded her of it.

“El, are you okay?” Mike asked, sitting up and placing an arm around her. “El, I’m so sorry. I got…I just…I got a little too carried away.”

“I’m okay,” El assured him, taking her hand and rubbing his, and looking at him with sincerity. “Not…not your fault. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Mike told her, gently taking her face in his hands and angling it towards him, where he softly rested his forehead on hers and rubbed his thumbs along her soft cheekbones. “El, don’t you dare apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He felt her rapid pulse in his fingers; felt it slow down to a safer, steadier tempo and, much to his dismay, felt drops fall onto those thumbs. Drops from her eyes. 

“I hate him,” El told Mike, her voice quivering and sad, and any regret that Mike felt about knocking Tony down and beating the crap out of him immediately escaped his body. He suddenly felt that it wasn’t enough; that he could have kept going and never stopped and it still wouldn’t be enough. “I hate that he made me scared. That he still makes me scared.”

“And that’s understandable,” Mike told her. “I mean, we’re just kissing, but… what happens to you, what boys do to you, that’s up to you. It’s your body. He didn’t respect that and that’s scary. But you never have to be embarrassed or sorry around me. Whenever you want to stop, you tell me, and I will. And I promise you I’ll never judge you for it.”

El reached over and placed her arms around him, holding him tightly, as he returned the hug and gently rubbed her back. She cried softly into his shoulder, pouring out the feelings that had weighed her down for weeks. Being with him – being with the boy she loved more than anything or anyone on Earth – did something to her emotions. Made them stronger and more powerful than she ever remembered them being, and she was grateful beyond anything that she had him to hold onto and take care of her.

“Maybe you’ll relax if you take a warm bath,” Mike told her. “My mom – she always runs a bath for me if I’m having a bad day or just feeling down. Would you like that?” El smiled at him and nodded, and he gave her shoulder a final squeeze before heading to the bathroom.

“Oh, there are these little bubble bath bottles in here,” he said. “Perfect. I’ll get it ready and you can go ahead in and have your privacy, okay?” El nodded, and allowed herself to breathe calmly as she heard the sound of the faucet going in the other room. She thought of the boy inside, who left everything – his friends, his family, his safety – just to help protect her miles away. How he made her feel exhilarated with just sweet kisses and understood without a question when she wanted to stop. How he just wanted to take care of her. She’d never felt so loved and appreciated in her entire life, and, while her tears had just started to subside, she couldn’t help but feel them coming back.

In a few moments, he returned, looking at her with that gentle smile of his that she was so deeply in love with.

“Bath is all set, El. There are towels and…” But before he could finish his sentence, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him deeply, then separated and pressed her hand to his face.

“I love you so much, Mike.” He smiled and pressed his mouth to her forehead, holding her there.

“I love you, too.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Paul, I hate to keep you here,” Will told him as Joyce was on the phone with the local precinct to report El missing. It had been hours and they had no clue where she was. She didn’t want to scare El by having police come after her, but any guess at where they could be was a crapshoot and they had to at least be intelligent about it. However, a lot of time went into that, and, the whole time, Paul didn’t leave. “Don’t you have a game tonight?”

“No, just a practice,” Paul told him. “Game is on Sunday. The coach will be pretty pissed at me for skipping practice and I’m sure I’m going to hear it from my father…”

“Then go. Seriously. You’ve been great and you gave us more information than we would have had without you. I just feel bad.”

“Jane is my friend,” Paul told Will, looking at him with those annoyingly perfect green eyes. Hearing Paul say that – the sugar-coated version of what he thought was the truth - made the hurt and loneliness hidden inside of him swell; the feeling that he always had when Mike looked like he was a good mood and Will once again discovered it had nothing to do with him or the party, but with her. 

And he loved El. He did.

But, while he did, she was always the one that drew in people that he liked and it made him angry, and then ashamed for being angry.

“Paul…she…she really loves Mike. A lot. It’s one of those nauseating things that IS nauseating because it makes any normal person jealous.. Here.” Will led Paul outside the living room and into El’s room. Paul stopped in the doorway.

“This seems a little invasive, no?”

“No worries, we’re not going through anything. It’s just her pegboard here. Look.” And Paul reluctantly took a few steps forward to see El’s neat, cute room, which was childlike, colorful and pleasant like she was. Alongside her dresser on the wall there was an enormous peg board full of pictures; mostly pictures of a tall, lanky, freckly boy.

THAT was him?

That was the boy she was so madly in love with?

(More importantly, THIS was the kid who beat the crap out of Tony?)

It wasn’t that he was a bad looking guy. It was just that there was something so…ordinary about him. Almost vulnerable and frail, like you could sneeze and he would blow away.

“She sits here every night and writes him letters,” Will told him. “When we moved here, it took weeks for her to even talk to me. She lost her father – the one who adopted her, and she was heartbroken, but I don’t think that’s the only thing that broke her heart. She missed Mike. She missed them both so much that she was just quiet. I’d try to catch her on a good time because, well, we only have each other, really. But she would lie here, just looking at his picture from her bed and crying. I’m sorry if you have…you know, a thing for her. That must be kind of annoying to hear. I just don’t want you to go all in thinking you can change it. You really can’t. I’ve never seen anything like Mike and Eleven in my life – with kids, with grownups, hell, even on television. They’re…different.”

“Wow,” Paul replied, and something about his reaction surprised him. It was a bit annoying, yes, but he wasn’t hurt. Why wasn’t he hurt? He had been curious about this girl for weeks and the understanding that she and her boyfriend were the next Fred and Ginger didn’t kill him with jealousy.

What was WRONG with him?

“I’m sorry,” Will told him. “I don’t mean to be a jerk.”

“You’re not a jerk, Will,” Paul told him. He placed his hand on Will’s shoulder and Will froze. The feel of his hand on his shoulder did something to him; like a surge of electricity rushed through his entire body at a simple touch. He’d never felt like that before.

“No?” Will managed.

“No. You’re a good guy. Jane’s lucky to have you. Look, I’m sorry if I’m creeping you guys out; you and Leslie…”

“LESLIE! Shit!” Will shouted. “I haven’t called her to ask if she’s heard anything; Mom is going to kill me! Leslie is going to kill me!”

“No worries; I’m sure she’ll understand.”

Will looked at Paul dubiously. He really had no idea what Leslie was like. What if maybe El said something to her? The whole notion that his stepsister and his best friend wandered off without even so much as telling him where they were going was maddening. What did they think they were going to accomplish on their own?

What were they doing right now? Were they safe? Did they find a comfortable place to sleep? Would they sleep? He closed his eyes for a minute and silently prayed – even as a person who never prayed before – that they were okay, wherever they were.  
________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After El finished her bath and Mike offered her Nancy's clean clothes to sleep in for the night, he took a shower and she lay down. The day had been so crazy that she fell asleep mere seconds after her head hit the pillow.

Mike came in and saw her, her mind drifting far away into a deep sleep. He reached alongside her to grab a pillow and took an extra blanket from the linen closet. Before lying down on the floor alongside her, he leaned in and kissed her forehead, adjusting the disheveled sheets underneath her to tuck her in more snugly. 

“Goodnight, El,” he whispered. He knew she wouldn’t answer, but he felt like he couldn’t go to bed without saying goodnight to her.

He made himself comfortable on the floor, and, exhausted himself, fell asleep pretty quickly, content that El seemed to be in a peaceful, tranquil state.

Her dreams, however, suggested otherwise.

_Hop was alone in a desolate, lifeless area. He was barely recognizable. He was covered in dirt, his hair long and unkept, his beard wild and long. But the sound…the sound that came out of his mouth was most unsettling. It was a wail; a loud cry almost like a dog howling. His face was completely distorted in despair._

_“Hop!’ El called, and then instinct urged her to look underneath her. The floor was wet. This was the void. But she’d never been to the void in her sleep. How was she managing this?_

_“El,” he croaked, and, for a moment, El hurried over with the hope that he could hear her._

_“Hop, it’s me! It’s El. Where are you? Tell me where you are so we can find you, please!” But there was no reply. Only the sound of footsteps as a man in lab clothes – clothes that looked very familiar because men in the same outfits tended to her, approached him quickly._

_“Dr. Brenner thinks you could use another one,” the voice said with malice._

_“NO!” Hop shouted, his voice thick with exhaustion, fear, and anger. “No, not another one, no please…” And in that moment, the man in the lab outfit shocked him with something. For longer than he really felt he had to. Hopper convulsed and fell to the floor in a heap._

_“HOP!” El shouted, running to get him. She ran to the floor, but he vanished._

_However, she did hear another voice._

_“And the girl?”_

_“She’ll hear him,” came another voice. She knew this one all too well, and the mere sound of it made her pulse race and sweat form on her brow. “When we get a connection from her you will locate her. I know that she’s in Illinois but I’m not sure where.”_

_“What do we do when we find her?”_

_“She’ll put up a fight,” he continued. “She’s spent three years being humanized by these people and thinks she’s above all of this. But she’s the only weapon we’ve got. She needs to be trained.”_

_Weapon…_

_El was sick of being a weapon._

_“And Chief Hopper?”_

_“He’s a menace to society…a nuisance. Once we have her we can dispose of him…”_

“NO!” El shouted, sitting up, her hair drenched in sweat and her heart racing. Only she noticed something else; the lights flickered, and a drop of blood escaped her nose. In seconds, Mike jumped up from the floor and sat alongside her.

“EL! What’s wrong? What just happened?”

“Hop; I saw him!” El said, frantically. “He was crying! He was being given electric shots…they hurt him. Then Papa said he…he was going to find me. He was going to keep me. And I woke up and…it happened again, I made the lights turn off…I don’t know how!” Tears flowed out of her eyes like a river and Mike held her there.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “He’s not going to keep you. I won’t let that happen, you hear me?” El nodded her head, feeling the warmth of Mike’s arms as he swayed her on the bed. After a moment, he looked at her.

“Listen…we don’t know if this is a dream or not. And if it is, maybe you just got so scared that it made your powers work, like when Tony attacked you that one time. Or, I don’t know, do you? Can you tell?” El shook her head.

“It seemed very real. Only…I don’t know, it could have been a dream. I’ve never seen him at night when I was sleeping before.”

“Yeah…that is weird.” He ran his fingers through her hair, looked at her determinedly in the eye and helped her to return to her steady breathing. “If we find Kali tomorrow, and she’s able to help you, maybe you can find where he is. I know it’s hard and I know seeing him must have hurt. But you need to rest, El. I promise we’ll figure it out in the morning.” He gave her a soft kiss on her cheek and was about to head back to his blanket set up when El reached for his arm.

“Please stay with me,” she begged him, her hazel eyes looking at him longingly and fearfully. A lump formed in his throat. He wanted to. SO badly. But was that the okay thing to do? 

“El, are you sure?”

“I…I need you next to me,” El told him. “Please just…hold me? So that I can sleep.” 

Holding her…

That sounded amazing. 

Plus it wasn’t wrong or inappropriate; it was just snuggling. 

Without a verbal response, he lay on the bed alongside her and wrapped her in his arms, spooning her. Her back turned to him, she rubbed her back snugly into his chest. She fit perfectly alongside him like that, and holding her brought him incredible comfort. Her warm little body soothing and caressing him, and the comfort of his arms giving her ease, they slowly drifted off into a peaceful sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike and El continue on their journey, and the hunt for them continues. Kali and Mike have an interesting reaction to one another! Happy reading!

_11/23/86_

_Dear Will,_

_I don’t know when this letter will get to you, but I really felt like I had to write it. I know your mom is probably freaking out and I know you’ll probably show this to her because, if it were my mom, she’d make me. I just want to explain._

_Trust me when I say that I am making sure that El and I are safe. I know it may seem weird for a boyfriend and a girlfriend our age to be alone but I promise I’m being respectful and it’s perfectly appropriate (that’s especially for you, if you’re reading this, Mrs. Byers. And I promise I’m not lying. I’d never disrespect El; I love her too much). Also trust me when I say I felt really crappy about taking her away without telling anyone where we were going or what we were doing. I know that this may cost me the chance to see El on Thanksgiving and it will take a lot of begging on my part to see her again period, but there are a few things going on that I haven’t told you._

_Number one, I don’t think Hopper is dead. For one thing, we never found a body. Max always thought that was strange, even though Dustin and Lucas thought his remains were just obliterated by that machine. That doesn’t make sense, though. All the other men left at least some form of physical remains. Why not him? Secondly, I don’t think El’s told you this, but she’s been seeing him. She’s suspected her powers are back before that whole thing with Tony because she’s felt like she did before, when she used to be able to find people in the void. Finally, and even weirder, Holly has had visions. She saw Hopper trapped somewhere. She saw that asshole who kept El captive in a lab her whole life capture her again, and I just couldn’t risk it. El has a sort of sister – a girl who was in the lab and who taught her how to strengthen her powers before. We think that she can help El to train them back. That’s where we are, and, if this works, we can find Hop and she can defend herself. I tried doing this the right way and asking your mom, and she said no. And I get why, but I couldn’t risk it. I love her too much; the thought of this asshole taking her away and experimenting on her again hurts me. I’d do the same for you, for Dustin, for Lucas, for Max, for any of you guys. In fact, if we DIDN’T break the rules and go out to find you in the rain that night three years ago, we never would have found El OR you. Sometimes breaking the rules and being a little reckless is necessary. Because when you care about people, that comes first – before logic or reason or the right thing or anything else._

_Anyway, I really hope you can forgive me and that, when El and I get back, you (and hopefully Mrs. Byers too) will see why we had to do this. I’m sorry I’ve been keeping so much from you. It’s just that I know you’ve been through a lot, and I really felt bad throwing more at you. I thought you’d really want the chance to start fresh and to focus on just normal life without any of this other stuff getting in the way. Please consider that before you decide to hate me too much._

_I’ll hopefully talk to you soon._

_\- Mike_

Mike dropped his letter to Will in the nearest mailbox, copying the address on a house they passed on their way to the warehouse. Will was smart; surely he’d figure out it was just an address he selected for convenience. However, Mike hoped that they’d be back by then; that Kali could teach El a few tricks and strategies and that she could go home to practice them.

That, however, was probably wishful thinking. This wasn’t going to be easy.

El lay next to him that morning, quiet and relaxed. She lay peacefully in his arms and he held her there contentedly until she awoke. He softly rubbed his fingers against the smooth skin of her arm and soaked her in. He knew that, after this, there was a possibility that he wouldn’t get the chance to be this close to her in a while, and he wanted to take full advantage.

She woke up with a smile, turned to him and gave him a light kiss on the cheek, and a warmth filled his entire body when the naïve thought in his head drifted away to a dream of doing this every day – of growing old with her, being adults and married, and waking up to her in his arms every single morning.

But that was years away…

Now they were kids. Kids doing something extremely stupid, and he credited himself that, at the very least, they were able to manage their teenage hormones to the point that they were cuddling together, but never crossed any boundaries. He wasn’t Tony, she wasn’t ready for anything more than a make out session, and, in all honesty, neither was he. Who knew that they would find each other so young; their hearts and their minds years beyond where their hormones and urges were? Which is why the thought of pulling an Erica Kane and Jeremy wasn’t even something either could seriously acknowledge, but marrying her? Living with her, protecting her the rest of his life? That was a thought that existed in the back of his head every day and he couldn’t ignore it. Especially not when he was given the gift of waking up alongside her.

He let her go to the bathroom to wash up first since they had both bathed and showered the night before. As she was readying herself, he took some paper he had from his school binder and scribbled a note to Will. He, at the very least, owed him an explanation. He knew he owed everyone one, but, since Will was kept in the dark the longest, it seemed only fair to fill him in first. Then they grabbed their backpacks full of books and clothes and were on their way.

They picked up a stamp at a post office they passed on the way to the warehouse, and, as he mailed it, he crossed his fingers and hoped that it may soften the blow if Mrs. Byers got her hands on it too. 

But now, they were a short walking distance from the warehouse. El’s calm disposition from the morning vanished. She had a cold, hard look on her face – one that she would have before using her powers. She stopped in her tracks and gazed at the corner of the warehouse.

“A van,” she said, looking. “They use a van to hold them all. They’re…they’re back.” 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

“Karen…listen, I know you said Mike told you he was at some kind of AV meeting, but he’s not. He came over here to collect Jane and they’ve run off…because…she’s been bullied by a boy at school. His impulses got the better of him and he came to protect her and do something about it….some boy named Tony. And…evidently, after this Tony person tried to assault her for a second time, he beat him to a pulp at school and panicked…yes, I know, I couldn’t believe it either, but Jane’s tutor saw the kid after the fact who told him the whole thing…I would have, Karen, I would have! Trust me! Unfortunately I wasn’t filled in on any of this until yesterday and I was hoping that they’d either come back or be found and that I can call you without causing a panic, but sadly, they haven’t.”

Will gazed into his untouched cup of juice, hardly daring to imagine the reaction that Mrs. Wheeler was having. Given that he could practically hear her angry voice on the other line, he could imagine that Mike was surely in for it when he got home. After an evening of worry and contemplation and El having not returned home like Joyce hoped she would, and no response from the police, there was no other way. His mom had to let Mike’s mom know what was happening.

He had to credit his mom for coming up with that story; that Mike panicked simply because he had attacked the boy victimizing El and he was afraid that they would get in trouble for it. It made sense. Mike never hurt a fly and the idea that it would bring him to a state of panic and urge him to hide was consistent with the Mike they all knew.

Still, Will felt almost bad, because, with El and Mike missing, his mind kept drifting back to Paul. Paul who missed his football practice to stay here with him and try to locate Jane. Paul who sat with him and calmed him down when he started to panic. Several times, Paul had extended a hand or an arm to his shoulder, and once even to his knee.

Was this…this feeling of simultaneous elation and terror…was this what normal people felt? 

Only thing was, a pain in his gut lingered and wouldn’t leave. Paul wasn’t like him. Paul liked El, not him. He was a football stud surrounded by girls. Pretty girls who would want to make out with him like Max wanted to make out with Lucas and El wanted to make out with Mike. He wasn’t holding a secret in his heart like Will was; one that could possibly change how everyone felt about him.

People didn’t think it was right for boys to feel this way about other boys. It was immoral; corrupt. It wasn’t natural. People would tell him it was a phase. That he should just shut it off.

But Will couldn’t.

It was funny; this was always in him, but he silenced it until Leslie identified it. He just felt different; alienated, lost, and alone when everyone else talked about girls. It plagued him and he had no idea why. Then, her just coming right out and saying “you like boys” – it did something to him. It was a key to a door he had locked and refused to open. With that door shut, he could just retreat into a place where he could chalk these feelings up to a hope for nostalgia and dismiss any discomfort over the guys getting girlfriends as a yearning to stay in touch with the good old days and be a child forever. A child who would never have to worry about falling in love period because children don’t care about those things.

And he never felt it directed at any one person before. At least not like this. 

True, a part of him felt that urging toward Mike. But he didn’t know how much of it was because of Mike himself or because, when he and Mike were alone, and they were bonding and talking and connected – it made him feel normal. Accepted. And when you feel like a complete loner, you crave that feeling of acceptance. Yes, there were things about Mike that were attractive. But he didn’t really long for him the way El did. He missed him – deeply – but he didn’t long for his touch. He didn’t crave his affection. He just missed him; he missed being around someone who made him feel okay.

And then Paul came around.

Ugh, who was he kidding? Paul spent a grand total of one afternoon with him. You can’t possibly develop feelings for someone in one day, can you?

But…why not? Mike fell in love with El in a few days and he felt it sincerely. It lasted for three years and it wasn’t weakened at all. Sometimes, you just know. And why were only guys and girls allowed to know? It simply wasn’t fair. A person could fall in love with another person – any other person – and that should be okay. Shouldn’t it?

“NO, Karen, PLEASE…please don’t do anything rash yet. The police are notified. I’ve given them a description of Mike. They are on top of it…okay, how about if we don’t hear anything in a day, then you come here. Until then I promise – I absolutely PROMISE – that I will keep you posted. But you and I’m sure Ted are in no condition to drive and the last thing I need is you crashing your car on the way over here.”

Will sighed, reality kicking him back in. Mike’s dad was probably still asleep on a chair from what Mike told hm. That wasn’t love.

Love probably felt good, like the world was a brighter, better place at just the vision of someone. Like what Mike had with El. Would he ever have that with anyone?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mike’s hand squeezed El’s tighter as the two walked quietly. The closer they got to the warehouse, the bigger and scarier it seemed. Mike could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and his hands started to sweat inside El’s. He kept giving her glances to see if she was okay, and she looked just as afraid as he was. Her free hand was fidgeting with the side of Nancy’s dress he let her borrow; a flowing red and white long sleeved floral piece that was a little too loose, but would work. All in all, though, she approached the situation just like she did that dress – was taking it on, whether it would fit properly or not.

“You okay?” Mike asked. El turned to Mike, her eyes solid and strong. She was so much braver than most people he knew. He wished he could be like her sometimes.

“Stay by me,” El told him. “We’re a team, right? We stay together.”

“Of course,” Mike told her, taking both of her hands in his. “El…this is you. This is your sister, this is your life. We leave when you think it’s right. Just…don’t let her get into your head.”

“Don’t let her get into yours, either,” El told him, squeezing his hands back and looking at him protectively. 

“I won’t,” Mike told her. El sighed.

“It’s not that easy. She’s…it’s hard to explain. Just…stay by me and we’ll stick together, okay?”

Mike wondered what could have been scaring El so much; what was this girl capable of doing? He was pondering this when a figure appeared in his peripheral vision. He looked toward a window of the warehouse.

A girl –a pretty, dark, goth girl – was staring at them.

“Is…is that her?” Mike asked. El turned around, saw the figure disappear from the window, and nodded.

“Yes. She’s seen us.” She turned to Mike, giving his hand a final squeeze. “Come. Remember – don’t let her get into your head.”

“I’ll try,” Mike told her. They went to the same opening in the window that they found the last time, Mike still nervous but trying his best to stay calm and steady for El. The girl that he saw in the window didn’t look as bad as he imagined. And, like he said, it was her sister, right? She had to have some understanding in here.

The empty warehouse remained empty. El and Mike exchanged surprised looks. They were sure she would have come down to address them having seen them. El approached the corner of the building, near the staircase where they saw the room set up last time. They didn’t hear a sound.

“She…you saw her too, right?” Mike asked.

“Yeah,” El told him. She walked a few steps closer to the staircase when Mike heard a sound that stopped him in his tracks.

A loud, ear-piercing, deafening scream. 

Only it was a familiar scream. It was El’s.

Mike turned to El in disbelief. He’d know her voice anywhere. Where was that sound coming from?

“What?” El asked him.

“I just…did you just hear that?”

“Hear what?” El asked.

“You – you screaming. I swear I just heard it! I still hear it!”

Then El remembered…Kali could make anyone see anything she wanted them to see. She was getting inside Mike’s head now, and El was powerless to stop it.

“Mike! Mike don’t listen, it’s not real!”

Unfortunately, Mike couldn’t attend to El because he was distracted by the disturbing vision in front of him.

It was him.

He was seeing himself, bound and gagged and terribly beaten, half conscious, sitting in a chair with Brenner behind him, and El across from him, on her knees, screaming, tears falling down her face like raindrops in a violent storm, crawling over to his bruised and bloody form in utter desperation and despair.

“What the fuck?” Mike asked, stepping toward it. “It’s…it’s me. Brenner has me with a knife and you’re…you’re begging him to stop.”

“No, no, Mike, it’s not real!” El told him, but his hand slipped out of hers, he was so hypnotized by the unsettling image before him. She hurried after him, reached for his hand back, but it was numb; hung like a dead weight at his side.

She wished she could see what he was seeing so that she could better advise him not to fear it, not to believe it. But she just saw him, walking toward nothing, but probably seeing something so disturbing that he’d never be able to shake it. Mike, on the other hand, heard the deceptive sound of the fake El crying and saw the utter despair in her illusion of a face.

“NO! TAKE ME, KILL ME, PLEASE, PAPA, PLEASE! JUST NOT HIM, PLEASE NOT HIM!”

Mike heard the vision of himself release a muffled cry in pain and fear, and it sounded like heavy sobs were escaping his throat; whatever he could manage. Then, he saw, his entire body fixed and trembling, that Brenner took out a knife and held it to his throat.

“I told you, Eleven, that there are consequences if you disobey me,” Brenner said calmly and evenly, as though he didn’t have a child held captive and terribly beaten alongside him. Mike shook and fell to his knees watching it, and the real El looked desperately around for the person she knew was responsible for this.

“KALI!” the real El shouted, feeling anger surge through her uncontrollably. How dare she try to scare Mike away from her like this? She had to stop; this could damage him in ways she couldn’t imagine. 

Mike was frozen alongside her, his face white as a sheet, a stray tear falling down his face. He knew it wasn’t real but the vision of something he was terrified may happen so many times killed him. Seeing her screaming and begging to spare his life – seeing her in that much pain – was the worst part of it. 

“NO!” Illusion El shouted. “PAPA, DON’T!” El turned, bravery taking over, and the blade in Papa’s hand was being pressed directly to Mike’s throat. 

“He’s…he’s going to kill me! He’s going to slit my throat!”

“STOP IT!” Real El shouted, and, suddenly, everything stopped, because with her scream, all the windows on their side of the warehouse shattered. The illusion vanished as quickly as it came. Mike's instincts were stronger than the hypnosis the vision brought him; he ran over to shield her and kneel on the ground as soon as they heard the glass break. After the sound died down and all the glass had settled, the two knelt there, shaking, tears falling. Mike was terrified. El could feel it in his quivering body and through the sound of his heartbeat.

A figure descended from the steps as El wiped blood away from her nose.

“Wow. That’s twice your powers spontaneously worked, huh?”

El’s anger hadn’t subsided. She turned to Kali with fury.

“How could you do that? How could you show him that?”

“How could you bring him here?” Kali asked. “You know we have an operation that’s secret. This…I’m assuming this is your boyfriend.”

“My name is Mike,” Mike said bravely, his voice still shaking. “And I’m here too. You can talk to ME.”

Kali looked at him like his confrontational tone had absolutely zero impact on her, and turned back to El as if he hadn’t spoken.

“This is the guy? Really? You could do much better.”

“There IS no better than him,” El stressed, getting closer to Kali in a confrontational way, with Mike not far behind, even if he was still trembling so much it impacted his ability to walk. “And we’re not here to fight, we’re here…for help.” At that, Kali let out an odd laugh. Amused, yet also insulted.

“Oh, really? You don’t want to stay; you just want to use me for my powers to help you with yours and then go back to your regularly scheduled programming? Sorry, sister. That’s not how we play here. You can leave. Take Olive Oyl over there with you.”

“Olive Oyl?” El asked. Mike, turning completely red, shook his head.

“It’s a skinny awkward, cartoon character. Who’s a woman.” El turned to Kali, who was chuckling and walking up the stairs, and followed her up. Mike followed, his cheeks still red from fear and anger.

“Mike is not a skinny cartoon woman,” El said, and the sheer seriousness of her voice saying something so ridiculous managed to at least add some light to the situation. Mike restrained some laughter, however much he appreciated her concern, but Kali restrained nothing, laughing openly but not stopping to turn to El one time. “He came with me because…his sister…she has visions.” At this, Kali stopped and turned. The idea of someone else with visions certainly got her attention. 

“What kinds of visions?”

“She sees Hop…the policeman. He’s still alive. I think Papa has him.”

“That’s his problem,” Kali muttered, starting to turn around.

“Really?” Mike asserted, feeling himself grow even angrier listening to this. “You and your team go and kill for people who were hurt before but you can’t save someone who’s still being tortured by him now? And El – she’s impacted by this too. My sister sees her being taken.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t recall inviting you into this conversation,” Kali told him, taking a step closer to him.

“You don’t have to. I can talk if I want to,” Mike told her brazenly. “And I will when the girl who was tortured in the lab right alongside you needs help to save her dad and you won’t help her.”

“Let me ask you something Olive…”

“Mike…”

“Whatever…you weren’t so brave and outspoken a few seconds ago, were you? When you saw yourself beaten to a bloody pulp and about to be killed in front of this girl you love so much. Do you know how much that would kill her to see? How much it would destroy her? That’s what’s about to happen if you get involved in her life any deeper. Her Papa...he's not some creepy old man. He’s dangerous and twisted. He has not one ounce of humanity left and doesn’t care who he hurts, and he WILL kill you and not give a damn about it. And if that happens, your problems are over – you’ll be at peace, but what about her? She’ll have to live with it.”

“What, are you a goddamn fortune teller?” Mike asked, letting El’s request not to let her in his head motivate him. “I thought your power was to mess with people’s minds and make them see things.”

“You don’t have to be a fortune teller to know what Papa is capable of,” Kali told him. “And I’ve seen it. I went from one family to another and I’ve lost count of how many him and his team of scientists have hurt or killed looking for me. And believe me – I haven’t forgotten how it feels.”

“That’s why we need you,” El told her. “My powers…they’re different. I can use them to fight back. I destroyed monsters that nobody else could kill and now…I can’t do anything.”

“Oh yes, you can,” Kali told her. “If you threw that little pervert across the room and broke all these windows, you still have powers. You’ve just lost control of them. You just need to retrain yourself into activating them.”

“So you’re going to help us?” El asked, hopefully, Mike alongside her, staring Kali down hoping that she would give the right answer. There was silence as the three of them looked intently at each other.

“If I agree to this – and that is a big if – I have a few conditions…”

“What conditions?” El asked. She looked from Kali to Mike and then back again.

“Number one - the only other person involved – who comes here and deals with me – is Olive. It was smart of you to not bring an entire army of misfits. But Olive…I like her sass. Just Olive can work.”

“Can you stop calling me Olive?” Mike groaned in agitation.

“He’s a…boy,” El said, confused. 

“I know he’s a…never mind. Number two – in this warehouse, he is Olive.”

Mike and El exchanged looks. Mike was a little upset to see that El was trying to hide a smile, but he breathed in deeply and accepted it. He could be called Sally Shithead for all he cared as long as she helped El.

“Number three – you keep in touch with me. I have a radio. Olive the walking pocket protector looks like the kind who would talk to all his friends on a walkie talkie, so do you have one too?” El nodded, and Mike felt himself flush red. He had no idea precisely how debilitating this would be.

“Number four – and this is my final condition…if you find your policeman, and you find Papa, I have to come with you. And I get to kill him.”

At this Mike looked at El cautiously. El looked unsure of this request. Mike didn’t see the problem; this man deserved to die and, if he was going to, why make El be the person who had to do it? But instead, to his surprise, El looked taken aback by the suggestion.

“Papa…you’re…you’re going to kill him?”

Mike looked at her in utter disbelief. 

She sounded UPSET about this.

This was the man who tortured her, hurt her. The man who took away her innocence and her freedom, who turned her into a machine and robbed her of a normal life. She didn’t want him killed? She had an instinct to protect this monster?

“Jane…this man destroyed our lives. Took away any chance we had of being normal and treated us like animals. Of course, he’s going to die. And, if you want to protect yourself and to find your policeman, I can help you…but I need your word. Papa has to die. And I have to be the one to do it.”

“But…I mean…”

“El, what is there to think about?” Mike asked, looking at her and unable to conceal his anger. “This man can hurt you. Why would you…”

“YOU just said it was my life. My choice,” El asserted, turning on him and giving him a cold, intense stare. “You don’t know Papa. You don’t know what I went through. You don’t get to decide.”

“No, but, El, I know YOU, and I know how much he hurt you. He doesn’t deserve sympathy from you.”

“Olive is right,” Kali echoed. “Wow. I didn’t think I’d agree with this creature so fast, but here we are.”

El looked from one to the other, irritated that Mike would unexpectedly turn on her like this. They were right – she knew it – but it was more complicated than that. He was the only Papa she grew up with. The only person who kept her alive the first few years of her life. Barely alive, yes, and in a bad state, but to kill the person who raised you from infancy to late childhood even if he WAS a monster...that seemed...somehow wrong.

Still…

She remembered the looks he’d give her before the door to her cell shut and she’d be surrounded by darkness. He remembered the way he wouldn’t even touch her if she made a mistake; made big, burly men do it, and how he didn’t even flinch when they were rough with her and gave her bruises on her wrists and legs. She remembered that he would grin after shocking her and seeing that she had no choice but to obey him.

“Okay,” she answered. “What do I need to do?”

“First, we have to let the others know you’re going to stay with us a night. The methods are simple and you don’t need more than a day to learn them, but practicing and applying them will take time. You really SHOULD stay here…”

“I can’t,” El insisted, looking at Mike and seeing that his eyes still looked angry. She didn’t want to argue with him here, and feared the follow up conversation that they would have about Papa later. “Mrs. Byers, the lady who takes care of me, she’ll call the police. She probably already did. They’ll come looking for me here and I don’t want them to find you. If I can get back by tomorrow…they don’t have to do that.”

“Fair enough,” Kali said. “You two can stay here tonight. In separate rooms. You’re too young to make baby Olive Oyls.”

“Mike stays with me,” El insisted. Kali smirked at Mike.

“I must admit I’m surprised, Olive. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“We’ll just be sleeping,” Mike told her, his face red. “It’s…it’s not like that.”

“Score one for Olive. I guess chivalry’s not dead after all,” Kali muttered. She turned back to El. “Fine. It’s early enough right now to get a lot done today. I’ll introduce Olive to everyone and then we’ll go to the third floor of the warehouse to begin. I think I have an idea of what’s happened to you. I didn’t tell you when I saw you because I wasn’t sure, but then I remembered…if your powers are activated, enough to use them uncontrollably, they’re still there. It’s like a gene; something you’re born with. Like his sister has visions free of training but Papa luckily doesn’t know about her yet…”

“And he won’t,” El said. Mike turned to her gratefully, squeezing her hand, and she felt relief that he softened a bit.

“No, he won’t. We’ll make sure of that. But more so to the point, whatever this monster was you said was in your leg and came out of you. Did this monster possess anyone?” El and Mike exchanged surprised looks, but it was Mike who spoke first.

“How did you…”

“A guess, but that’s the only thing that makes sense,” Kali continued. “Because if it bit your leg - if it got into your bloodstream and became a part of you in some way - it was in the process of taking over your mind. Splitting you into two beings – it and you – and it was in you long enough to remove that piece of you that knows instinctively how to use your powers. It all got transferred to the monster. Kind of like a stroke can take away a person’s ability to do regular things, like talk or read. Thing is, you can teach them to read or speak again sometimes. It may never be the same as before, but you start with what they can do and you work off of it. You were able to use your powers twice – when Tony attacked you and when I forced that vision on you both.”

“More than that,” Mike asserted. “She had visions in the void. Of Hop…her policeman.”

“Hm…okay, then. Olive and policeman. What’s the connection, Jane?”

“I…was angry?” El asked, looking to Mike to see if he would agree with that assessment.

“Being angry isn’t enough,” Kali told her. “Have you been angry other times when you didn’t activate your powers?” El nodded. She did feel anger a lot of times before; when Joyce imposed a new rule, when Tony cornered her again, when Lisa and Tony mocked her or those bullies picked on Will. Her powers never worked then.

El thought harder.

The first time, she couldn’t throw Tony across the room until he threatened Mike. The second time, she wanted to stop Kali’s imposed vision of Mike being tortured and killed. 

“Mike,” she answered. 

“What?” Mike asked.

“No, no. It’s you. And Hop,” El told him. “The first time I threw Tony, he threatened to hurt you. The second time, you were scared and so was I, and I didn’t want to see you hurt. And Hop…I’ve been…I’ve worried about him.” 

“So that’s it, then,” Kali told her. “That’s your focus. That’s your motivation. Just picture Papa doing terrible things to Olive or your policeman.”

“I…I mean…”

Before El had a chance to respond, Kali nodded her head toward a vision on the floor in front of them. It was most likely the concluding scene of whatever she had started for Mike. Mike lay on the floor, bloody, his skin discolored and rotting. His throat had a big slash on it, and he was surrounded by a puddle of blood. 

El’s immediate impulse was to scream.

“El! El! What are you seeing?” Mike called, but Kali turned to him. 

“She needs this, Olive. She needs this motivation to train herself.”

“Isn’t there an easier way?” Mike asked, looking at El hyperventilating on the floor and reaching for something that wasn’t there.

“Getting back powers that were taken from her during a near possession? No, there is no easy way. You do what works.” Their conversation was interrupted with the crack of three local light bulbs, and Mike turned to see a steady stream of blood fall from El’s nose. With that, Kali removed the image, and Mike hurried over to her, wrapping his arms around her.

“El, it’s me! El I’m here!”

Sobbing, she felt comfort in his arms , then collected herself. He helped her up, and she wiped her nose, then went over to Kali.

“That…that should do it,” she said through thick tears. “Don’t…ever…let me see that again.”

“Trust me,” Kali told her. “It’s sadly a vision I’ve had to see for myself. With my own boy. I loved once, too. Only in my case, that vision was real. You won’t forget it, whether it’s real or not.” 

“I’m sorry,” El told her, reaching her hand out for Kali to take, and Kali accepted it and squeezed back.

“I still think you’re making a mistake,” Kali told her. “If you really love him…”

“There is no mistake,” Mike interrupted. “El and I are both doing this knowing we can lose everything. Because when you love someone, that’s what you do.” Kali sighed, and gave them each a jaded look.

“Sadly, I know,” she told them. “I loved him too. It doesn’t make it any easier. Come. Let’s bring you upstairs and then we’ll start training.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Max lay sleeplessly in her bed. It was Saturday morning and usually the day where she gladly slept in until noon, but she hadn’t slept all night.

She thought about Mike the other day; how strange and secretive he was being. She should have pressed him further. Going to see El and wander off into the streets of Chicago was something that could very well get both of them killed, particularly now that El had no way of defending herself. He got lucky that one bully was blindsighted by his use of hairspray. No way would he get that lucky if a team of people came to attack them both.

The thing was, she was so moved that Mike had put aside his pride and opened up to her after they had the rockiest relationship ever that she just let it go. To be nice.

That’s what you get for being nice. 

Max shoved her sheets off of her and started pacing. There had to be a way to figure out where he was. Last night in desperation, she, Lucas, and Dustin attempted to contact him on his radio and got no response. He was so desperate to disappear he didn’t even bring his radio with him.

Then, a thought popped into her head.

Holly.

Maybe if she spoke to Holly, she could get something out of her. If Holly indeed had visions, maybe she saw where they were.

This would be tricky, though. Holly was six and, thanks to Mike, never spoke to her or any of Mike’s friends. Max wasn’t exactly stellar with children. She never had younger brothers and sisters and didn’t know how to handle them. Yet, she was a GIRL. The only girl of the party left in Hawkins at the moment. Maybe she could get into her good graces…

But how? It would certainly look weird for her to knock on the Wheeler’s door and ask to hang out with a six-year-old. 

Then a thought crossed her mind…

Mrs. Wheeler thought Mike was away. She probably assumed that Dustin and Lucas were ALSO away, because they usually did all of their clubs and activities together. If she played the card that she was looking for a way to pass the time – offered to watch Holly – maybe Mrs. Wheeler would take her up on it.

And the fact was, Mrs. Wheeler liked Max. Because unlike the boys, Max went out of her way to say hello to her when she visited the Wheeler house and to ask her how she was. She picked up these manners from seeing how disregarded her own mother was. 

She was just considering this when her phone rang. She looked at the clock on her dresser.

9:20 AM.

Who would call at 9:20 AM on a Saturday? Then again, her mom and stepfather were early risers. Maybe it was for one of them. She let it ring, assuming they’d pick it up, but then she realized that Neil probably took her mom out for the day to run errands or do something productive because he always complained about staying in and doing nothing. It “didn’t look good”. It finally stopped ringing, only to start again.

Max hurried to the phone; maybe this had to do with Mike.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Oh, Max, thank goodness it’s you. It’s Mrs. Wheeler.” Mrs. Wheeler said on the other line, her voice shaking and frantic. She guessed that Mrs. Byers must have called and told her that Mike was missing. 

“Mrs. Wheeler?” Max asked.

“Yes, I’m so sorry, honey, but…Michael…he told me he was going to some AV club meeting and it turns out he was going to Illinois to protect Jane rom some bully and now he’s run off and…nobody knows where they are. Did you hear from them, Max? Do you know where they could be?”

Shit.

There went her plans to talk to Holly.

Unless she used this situation to her advantage.

“N-no. I had no idea he was going anywhere this weekend, honest,” Max told her, and then breathed in deeply hoping this next part would work. “You…you must be really worried.”

“Max, this isn’t like Michael. He gave me a flyer and everything; he’s been doing so well in school this year I just didn’t think.”

“Of course,” Max continued. “Listen, Mrs. Wheeler, I imagine you need to make calls, try to find out more information…can I help? Would you like me to take Holly for the day? That way you can do what you have to do and not worry her?”

“Max that…are you sure? I mean, that’s a big responsibility for the day.”

“I’d be happy to, Mrs. Wheeler,” Max told her. “She can hang in my room and we can read comics or play with whatever toys she wants to bring. Anything so that you can focus on Mike and I can help you all out.” 

“Of course. Well, Max that’s just so kind of you. Holly may like the change of scenery; frankly she’s starting to concern me a little, she’s been so quiet herself.”

She really had NO idea.

She arranged to drop Holly off in the next hour, and Max started straightening up her room and pulling out any of her old toys that she thought Holly might find amusing. Who knew at this time yesterday that she’d be hanging out with a first grader?

But Max couldn’t help but pat herself on the back for this. One plot twist and she had what could quite possibly be the key to finding Mike and El in her hands. Only Holly WAS a child. She had to be gentle with her; soft. She wasn’t about to interrogate her and use her like the lab did to El.

This could be it.

She contemplated telling Lucas and Dustin, but she didn’t want to hound this poor girl. It was one thing for her to talk to her. It was another thing for her to feel completely interrogated. No. This would be her and Holly.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Does Olive really have to be here?” Kali asked, looking at Mike sitting in the far corner of the third floor of the warehouse. They had just gone to meet the rest of Kali’s gang, and they hazed him just as much as Kali did. El was completely impressed, however, that he didn’t flinch or seem intimidated. Maybe beating up Tony did something to give him confidence, as odd as that was.

“We stick together. It’s our deal,” El told Kali. Kali sighed.

“Fine. As long as he doesn’t get in your way. Now…this is kind of like…well, how I trained myself. I can now get anyone to see anything without nearly as much effort. Kind of like you used to shut off a light or close a door. But it used to cause more strain. I got nose bleeds just like you. And the best way to train your body to work automatically is to pay attention to it. You’re going to start small. You’re going to move something little. But, as you do, I want you to keep that image in your head – that image of Olive on the floor. I know, it’s hard, but, trust me, it’ll work. Then, pay attention to where you feel the most strain. In your head, in your hand, in your eyes – and we'll work to strengthen you there first. Got it?”

“I think,” El told her. Kali placed a book on the ground before them.

“Remember – before you move the book, think of what you saw.”

El extended her hand and looked at the book. In the past, the focus was on the book and the book alone. This time, however, she thought of the horrifying image she saw of Mike, knowing well that it could be real; that that’s something Papa would do to him. She thought of how disgusted she was to see the boy she loved in that condition. Her energy came pouring out of her and into the book, which opened and broke into pieces.

Mike jumped across the room.

“Shit!” He called out. “El, you okay?”

“The big, bad exploding book didn’t kill her, Olive. Go back to your knitting,” Kali told him, then turned back to El. “Okay…yeah, a bit much. I know that your feelings are really intense with that. Remind yourself it’s not real. Remind yourself that he’s okay and that it’s just a possibility you fear. That will keep that anger there but the reminder that he is safe as long as you use your powers will allow you to control it.”

“Control,” El said. Kali took out a second book and removed the broken one.

El extended her hand and looked at it.

Mike was dead, but it wasn’t real. His body was bloody and decomposing, but not really – it was really alive and feet away from her. But Papa COULD find him. He COULD do that to him…

The book started shaking.

“Yes,” Kali told her. “Yes, now…keep that in your head and move it. Pretend that, if you move it, you’ll keep Olive safe. He won’t get hurt. It’s kind of like what Papa did to us in the lab. Do what I tell you to do and you won’t get the cell.”

That worked, and the shaking on the book lessened, allowing El to move it with greater smoothness and fluidity. The book dragged along the ground – slowly, stopping every so often. Mike watched it, feeling relief. This was working. Granted, it was slow and choppy, like a kid learning to ride a two-wheeler, but this method was effective.

Once the book was several feet away, El put her hand down and Keli walked over, impressed.

“Well done,” she said. “Now, where did you feel the strain most?”

“Here,” El told her, pointing to her heart. Mike approached them, alarmed by this.

“You feel pain in your chest?” he asked, turning to Kali. “Is…is that normal?”

“Not pain; strain,” Kali reminded him. “She’s working her mind and her body harder than you can imagine, Olive. It’s like how your heart beats rapidly during a workout. Not that you seem to know much about that.”

“But is it safe?” Mike asked. Kali sighed deeply.

“I hate to break it to you, Olive, but none of this is safe. Human beings aren’t supposed to do things like this. That’s why it was a top-secret government operation. But you both need El’s powers to find this policeman like you said. Then once she has better control over them it won’t strain her as much. But now that we know that the strain is there, we can treat it. Take breaks. Drink water. Diet – your diet is very important, El. If this puts strain on your heart you need to make sure that you don’t eat any foods that would worsen that strain.”

“We had nothing but vending machine junk yesterday,” Mike told her. “Chips and candy.”

“Well, take a break from that while you’re training,” Kali told them. “It’ll also impact how far we can get today.”

“No Eggos?” El asked, looking put out. Kali sighed.

“Moderation, sweetie, that’s it. Mostly healthy stuff. You say the lady who takes care of you makes you eat it anyway?”

“Yes,” El told her, feeling disgusted at the thought of Joyce’s Brussel sprouts.

“Perfect. Now be a good little girl and listen to her. We’re going to take a ten-minute break before we try again with something bigger, especially if the strain is in your chest. Maybe a tire this time. Then later today we’ll see if you can start finding people. Does that work?” El nodded. “Good. I’ll leave you two crazy kids alone for a minute and go grab a tire.” As Kali left, Mike held El’s hands in his and looked at her softly.

“Are you alright?” he asked. El nodded, feeling off, but not quite pinpointing why. “Friends don’t lie, El.”

“Friends…don’t tell each other what to do, either,” El reminded him, and her reason for being annoyed came rushing back. Mike told her how to feel about Brenner, and he never told her how to feel about anything. That hurt.

“What…you mean what I said about your Papa? El, I’m sorry to be a jerk. I just…I don’t understand. He hurt you. Why are you protecting him?”

“It…it shouldn’t matter,” El reminded him, firmly. The truth was, she had no clue why she was protecting him. She knew that she shouldn’t. And yet, here she was, feeling reservations about Kali killing him.

“I’m sorry, El, but…see it from my perspective. If someone was hurting me, and I defended them, would you think that’s okay?” An awful thought crossed El’s mind, and it scared her to say it, but, if he could be bold, so could she.

“I hurt you,” she reminded him. “I…I make you leave your family, I make you do dangerous things, I almost got you killed…”

“What? El, I do those things because I want to. They don’t hurt me. Well, yeah, I mean, physically they hurt me, but they help me take care of you and that makes me happy. Please – please don’t think that you hurt me. It’s like I said years ago – you saved me.”

“Saved you?” El asked, completely confused.

“Well, yeah. I was this…nobody. I was so little and weak and lame and…I don’t know, you make me want to be better. You make me want to fight for things – for you, for my friends, for myself. You make me a better person, El. I couldn’t be as strong without you.” She reached over and wrapped her arms around him tightly, more grateful for him than she could express. 

She would use this as well. This boy – this wonderful, loving, loud, overprotective, awkward boy – was everything to her. And if anything happened to him, everything would be lost.

It was due to strain her – the thought of losing him repeatedly a vision in her mind – but she would use it until the actions became more and more automatic. Because if she needed to protect him for real, she wanted to be sure that she could.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

“That’s a cool picture. What is it?” Max looked over at Holly’s drawing. Holly seemed disinterested in any of Max’s toys, which were mostly gender neutral type things like checkers, jacks, marbles, and so on. Max was never into dolls and such. She did, however, take up Max’s offer to draw some pictures. 

She was how Max would expect a six-year-old in a totally new situation without her mom and dad would be. She was quiet, a little withdrawn, and slightly sad. Max didn’t dare imagine what she knew about Mike’s disappearance. She didn’t want to even bring it up. If Holly didn’t know anything, then this wasn’t the time to upset her worse.

“It’s a garden,” Holly told her, although she had a bit of a bored tone to her voice, and Max didn’t blame her. It was entirely obvious that it was a garden; it was clear grass and flowers. Seemed like the Wheelers were generally not fans of people who played stupid. In that sense she was just like her brother.

“It’s pretty,” Max told her. “I like this one. Yellow is my favorite color.”

“It’s a daffodil,” Holly told her, shading another flower in with a pink crayon. “Mommy likes those.”

“What’s your favorite?” Max asked, and Holly shrugged. This was not going to be easy. This little girl was not in the mood for any kind of conversation.

“How about a snack?” Max asked. “My mom and step dad have a ton of fruit if you’re into that stuff. If not, I have some chips I sneak in under the bed.” That got Holly’s attention, and her eyes glowed in Max’s direction.

“Your mommy doesn’t know you keep them there?”

“Nope,” Max told her, a big grin on her face. “It’s a secret. You’ll keep it, right?” Holly nodded, a smile finally appearing on her face. 

This kid liked secrets.

This – this could be it.

“Well, I’ll trade you,” Max told her. “We can share some chips. I’ll tell you a secret and you tell me a secret. How’s that?”

“Okay,” Holly said, grinning and straightening up at the prospect of learning secrets. Max took out the bag of chips from her dresser and opened them up, placing them in the middle. “Not in a bowl?” Holly asked. Max shrugged.

“What’s the fun in that? Okay, I went first. My secret is I get chips and hide them in my room. Your turn.” Holly thought for a minute and then grabbed a chip.

“Okay, I have one!” she said. “Mommy tells me not to have any cookies before dinner, but sometimes, when she lets the dinner cook and goes to the bathroom or something, I sneak in and take one.”

“Nice!” Max said, putting out a hand for Holly to give her a high five. Okay, chips and cookies weren’t quite what they were going for, but it was a start! Clearly as a six-year-old she was playing copycat to get on her good graces. Food for food. Max would have to work her way up.

“Okay, my turn…sometimes, when my English teacher isn’t looking, I draw cartoon pictures of her with horns on her head.” Holly giggled, eating another chip.

“That’s mean!” She said. Max nodded.

“You’re totally right, Holly, but so is she, so it’s okay. Okay, your turn.” Holly thought a minute, chewing happily on her chip. Her eyes looked lighter and not as stressed as they were an hour or so before.

“Um…my teacher’s name is Mrs. Buddstein. Sometimes I call her Mrs. BUTTstein.” 

“Holly!” Max giggled, and laughed even harder seeing Holly laugh hysterically at this revelation. “Holly, you said I’M not nice?”

“She’s not nice either. Plus, she has a really big butt.”

“HOLLY!” Max shouted. Holly now giggled so much she was on the floor laughing. Given Mike said she’d been sad and withdrawn so long, Max felt good about giving this to her. Laughter was always healing. But, still, she couldn’t lose focus. She had a purpose in this meeting, after all.

“Okay, seriously,” Max continued. “My turn…I have nightmares sometimes. I see…monsters coming to get me.” Which was entirely true. Since the night Billy was taken, Max did sometimes have nightmares of the events that happened. Images of El being ripped apart instead of him, and Billy staying a monster forever and taking them all one by one.

“Oh,” Holly said quietly, her laughter subsiding and turning a little red.

“Yeah. I’m kind of afraid to tell anyone because I think they’ll think I’m lying or something. Like that’s babyish or silly. But it’s true. I still am afraid of monsters.”

Holly quietly chewed on a chip, then turned to Max.

“I…have nightmares like that too. Only it’s weird. I have them when I’m awake.”

Yes.

Yes, yes, yes

This was it.

“You do?” Max asked, faking surprise to the best of her ability.

“Yeah. I see…your friend, Jane. And your friend, Will. Did…Did Mikey tell you that?”

“No,” Max told her, and she felt good knowing she was completely honest. Seeing Holly’s smallness and innocence made her understand why Mike wouldn’t fill any of them in on these visions.

“Do…you think I’m silly?”

“Not at all, Holly. I mean, I see things too. I get it. Why don’t you tell me about them?”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A loud rapping at her door made Leslie jump.

She rarely got company at her small one-bedroom apartment during the week. She lived with her mom, who worked almost every hour of every day just to afford the rent. Without even a high school diploma, she had to take whatever odd jobs she qualified for.

Sadly for Leslie, she inherited her mother’s dyslexia. Not that dyslexia was necessarily something you could inherit. It was enough to make them both academic failures their whole life. And such things resulted in a life of all work and absolutely no reward if you didn’t know the right people.

Neither Leslie or her mother did. Leslie’s dad got her mom pregnant when she was seventeen and never participated more in her life beyond her conception.

Which is why Leslie was generally a recluse; stayed home and listened to music, played video games, and now, occasionally, met up with Byers or Hopper or invited them by her if they were just as bored as she was. Today, though, she definitely wasn’t expecting company.

She opened her door to see Paul.

Paul Richards.

The last person she expected to see at her apartment.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Hey,” he told her. “I know you hate me, and I don’t mean to intrude, but I figured it was safer to ask you since Mrs. Byers is not exactly in a good place right now…”

“I haven’t heard about Hopper,” Leslie cut him off. “How the hell did you find my address?”

“Yellow pages,” he told her. She rolled her eyes. Why the hell did their mother continue to keep them listed? “I mean, I could have been in the totally wrong place, but it was worth a try. And you haven’t heard anything? Anything at all?”

“No,” Leslie insisted, and, she didn’t want to say it, but she was probably just as worried as he was. Hopper was a good influence. This girl came to school not knowing a damn thing about anything and was now the top in their class in math and catching up in just about everything else. It made Leslie want to work harder, try harder than she ever did. Not that it mattered. When it took you triple the amount of time to read a basic sentence as your peers, working hard just didn’t get you to the same place. Still, it wasn’t like Hopper to up and disappear. She was always following rules and doing what she was supposed to. Especially for them to have run off after Mikey beat the crap out of Tony. And she didn’t even get to meet him after that.

“And you have no idea where she could be?”

“I told you, Paul, I don’t. I told Byers the same thing yesterday. Weren’t you with him? Somehow you got invited to that party and I didn’t.”

“It was hardly a party,” Paul told her. “It was a bunch of us wondering where she could be.”

“Right, while I was sitting here watching Miami Vice and eating popcorn. Would have been nice to know one of my best friends is missing.”

“Will felt really bad, Leslie. Please don’t make him feel worse.” Leslie took a look at Paul’s face, which softened at the sound of Will’s name.

Holy crap…

She was getting bad at this. It took her way too long to figure this out.

“That’s…interesting.”

“What’s interesting?” Paul asked. “You thought of something about Jane?”

“I wondered why you weren’t flipping out that Will and I were coming along to that Halloween party. Now it makes so much sense!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, in most situations, when a guy is into a girl and her boyfriend is very far away, and said boyfriend takes her away, he’d panic, you know? Start saying things about how irresponsible the boyfriend is. But…you don’t seem mad at Mike at all. You weren’t out there looking for her, you were with Will. You were checking up on him…”

Paul looked at her blankly, like he was starting to process what she was saying, but wouldn’t come out and admit it. His eyes looked disturbed; slightly hurt.

“And, I mean, come on, Will loves El for all the same reasons! She’s accepting, she’s easy to talk to, she has no pretention or standards for the right way to be…”

“Leslie, if you’re trying to draw a conclusion of some kind here, I’d appreciate it if you’d come out and say it.” Leslie gave him a look of concern and partial amusement, the latter of which she was trying desperately to hide.

“It’s…I don’t know if you’re ready for this, Paul.”

“Ready for WHAT? I just came here to see if you’ve heard anything about Jane…”

“Did you think he might be here?” Leslie asked. “You know, to get away from his mom?”

“Who? Mike?”

“Will!” Leslie came right out and said. “It’s just..I mean…you have every cheerleader and hot girl in the school after you and you never, EVER date any of them…”

“You’re reaching,” Paul told her defensively, taking a step backwards and feeling his temper get the better of him. A loud, fake laugh managed to escape his throat. “Are you trying to suggest that I’m not dating these girls or Jane because I have some kind of…feelings…for WILL?”

“How did you know his friend Mary took art with him? How did he come up? How did you know that he’s good at it, or which art room to find him in? And why did you invest all that time in getting bullies to stop picking on him?”

“He’s Jane’s friend!” Paul insisted, his face turning red. “Of course I’d want to know…”

“It’s okay, Paul,” Leslie insisted. “There is NO judgment here. As a matter of fact, you’re in luck, because it just so happens that Will…”

“I’m NOT like Will!” Paul shouted in a volume louder than he thought he had in him. “I’m not…I’m not a…”

“Do NOT finish that sentence with a word you’ll regret saying letter, Richards,” Leslie cut in. “Maybe if you didn’t spend your life trying to be Mr. Golden Child you wouldn’t be so ashamed of what you clearly are.”

“You’re sick. You know what? Fine. I’m done with you. ALL of you. What you’re saying is absolutely off base, so don’t you dare go around telling anyone.”

“I don’t talk to anyone,” Leslie retorted. “And don’t take it out on Jane and Wil that I see straight through your hetero football player prom king act.”

“Fuck off,” Paul grunted, and stormed away. A big lump rose in Leslie’s throat. This level of denial in a person could lead him to act desperately. She really hoped he didn’t do anything to hurt Will or El as some way to prove what a big, bad straight guy he was. Not that she thought Paul would, but he was a man who was found out, whose reputation rested on not. He wasn’t like Will, who always kind of knew it deep down.

Did she just make a terrible mistake?

___________________________________________________________________________________

By the end of the day, El had advanced to moving objects as large as a bicycle. She still couldn’t doing it quickly and automatically, but she could still move it, and, with longer breaks in between each large object, she was able to maintain enough energy to practice. She was able to move small objects – paperclips, pens and so on - with ease. With daily practice, as Kali told her, she would be able to get back to where she was at perhaps the start of her training with Papa. Mike promised he would teach all of these coaching methods to Will so that he could help her train at home, wishing beyond anything that he could just come back to Hawkins with her and stay so that he could be her coach.

They even practiced trying to find someone. Again, it started simple. Mike was across the room, and she had to figure out what he was doing with her eyes closed. Then, he would go to another room, and then outside the building. This part was easier; it didn’t require motion, and, while she still felt the strain in her chest and her body, it wasn’t as severe. They worked in a concentrated and focused way, and spent hours training, including breaks to eat. Mike offered to buy everyone a pizza, in part to get everyone off his back, and also because they gave them a place – however eerie a place – to stay for the night. To comply with Kali’s request to watch what El ate, they ordered her a grilled chicken salad instead. El wasn’t thrilled with it, but Kali, more like a real sister than Mike would have thought, pressed her to eat it.

It was 10:00 that night when they stopped. Kali offered them the small room off to the side, in part because the others were skeptical of the safety of Mike’s presence in the first place and really had no desire to see him no matter how much pizza he bribed them with. Additionally, in training her, Kali started to realize why she had a desire to protect Jane in the first place. She was sweet in a way that Kali didn’t usually encounter, and, while she hated to admit it, she was special. Unlike Kali, who had developed a jaded streak fairly early, Jane was loyal and true.

El and Mike took turns changing into pajamas with their backs turned, and then sat cross legged on the bed, whispering to each other so the others couldn’t hear.

“How do you feel?” Mike asked. “Do you think you’ll be able to keep practicing at home?” El nodded.

“Yeah. It’s just…hard. Hard that I used to do these things so easy and now I can’t move anything unless I think about you…like that.”

“I know,” Mike told her, holding her hand. “But just keep reminding yourself it’s not real, like Kali said.” El sighed and rubbed her thumb along Mike’s hand, expressing the fear she held in all day.

“When you’re not there, it may be different,” El said. “Today, well…I could open my eyes and see you. When I’m back in Illinois and you’re back in Hawkins, I can’t. And I’ll get scared.”

“Well, hopefully, with enough practice, then you can find me. You know, in the void like you did when Hop hid you.” El sighed, suppressing a smile. “What? What’s that about?”

“Don’t know if that’s a good idea,” El said. “It could be…spying, right? What if…you’re taking a massive shit or something?” Mike gave her a look, not used to anything remotely resembling sass coming from her.

“Okay, who knew you were nosy?” Mike asked, feeling himself flush red. “I can’t believe you even spied on us talking about you spying on us.”

“I’m glad I did,” El told him, softly smiling. “You…told everyone you loved me.” At this they were both red, and Mike turned away, embarrassed.

“I meant it,” he told her. “I just…I wish I told you first.”

“It’s okay,” El told him. “I was just happy to hear it.” Mike suddenly became curious, and, squeezing her hand, decided there was no time better than the present to learn to laugh at himself. 

“What…exactly did you see us doing?”

“Eating chips. Burping. Farting,” El answered, laughing. Mike covered his face with his hand and giggled too.

“Oh, man, El, that’s so embarrassing…”

“It’s okay. People burp. People fart,” El told him, giggling a little more. “I mean, Hop did a lot. I do…”

“No! El, please, I don’t want to HEAR about that!" The two of them broke into giggles, and now, it was El’s turn to be brave.

“Well..I just want to let you know if, you know, one day…when we’re older…if we stay in the same bed like we did yesterday, I accidentally do. You won’t think I’m gross will you?”

“Oh, I definitely will,” Mike teased. “In fact, I already do. I think I’m going to go inside with Kali and the others now.” He stood up and El giggled, grabbing his hands.

“No!” she laughed, pulling him down. Only she pulled him a little too hard and he flopped – his upper torso directly above hers – on the mattress. They gazed at each other, still giggling, only, in a moment, the laughter subsided. They realized just how close they were. Not moving, his upper torso still above hers while his legs dangled alongside hers, he reached his hand to her hair and brushed it gently away from her face.

“Does it make you happy?” he asked, smiling at her, his face so close to hers that she could feel his breath. “To think about…being older? Staying with me?” El nodded, breathless at the exhilerating feeling of him being so close to her. “Do you…ever think about it?”

“All the time,” El told him. She and Mike exchanged big, content smiles.

“Me too,” Mike told her, and he slowly leaned his face into hers. Their lips gently danced along each other as his hands brushed against her face, wanting to take in every bit of it while they had this time. They would have to go back tomorrow; he may not even get to see her on Thanksgiving after this, and he had to enjoy it while he could…

“I said I DON’T want little Olive Oyls in Jane’s future!” came a voice from behind the door. “I can HEAR you guys making out in there. It’s so loud and obnoxious that it sounds like you’re chomping on watermelon. Could you keep it clean?” At that Mike and El looked at each other and burst into laughter, Mike sliding off of her and landing alongside her. The comment wasn’t that funny, but the awkwardness of the day and the tension they felt being that close and that intense got to them. El wrapped her arms around him, feeling the shaking in his belly as he laughed.

“Watermelon…” El whispered to him.

“Okay, if I’m Olive, you’ll be watermelon now,” Mike teased. 

“Good. Watermelon is sweet,” El replied, as the two lay side by side, cuddlled snugly into each other. 

“Nice. Are you seedless? Because I like that watermelon better,” Mike teased. El shrugged.

“You need seeds. To grow. It’s…it’s germination…”

“Nice,” Mike told her, sincerely. “Seriously. El, I’m so impressed by how hard you’re working at school.” At that, El gasped, and sat up. “What? El, what’s wrong?”

“Homework!” she told him, panicking. “Mike, I haven’t touched it and I have so much!”

“Don’t worry, El,” Mike told her, guiding her gently back to lie down alongside him. “We’ll get to bed early, wake up early, and get started on it, okay? I’ll help you. I bet I can be just as good a tutor as Paul can.” El smiled again at him, and it was that new mischievous smile of hers that Mike thought he could learn to love.

“You were jealous of Paul at first, weren’t you?”

“Absolutely not,” Mike said in forced calm, which made El laugh even more. “I was not at ALL jealous of some handsome football stud tutoring my beautiful girlfriend and inviting her to a party!” El laughed, moving her hand to his face and, as she loved to do, caressing all of his freckles.

“Mike…you’re crazy. Paul is nice and all but…he’s not you.” Mike looked down, not able to face her while saying this part.

“Exactly. Sometimes I just wonder…when you’ll figure it out.”

“When I’ll figure what out?” El asked, the light tone in her voice sounding confused.

“That…I’m nothing special. That I’m just some tall, skinny, awkward guy and you’re beautiful and could do so much better. Just like Kali said.” 

“Stop,” El told him, becoming serious and almost angry. “Don’t say things like that!”

“It’s true,” Mike told her, shrugging. 

“No it isn’t,” El reassured him, taking his hands. “You’re…you. You’re kind and you care and you always help me and take care of me. And handsome. I love the way you look. You are special. You’re special to ME. More special than anything.” Again, she leaned forward and kissed him, and, appreciative, he returned it, pulling her close to him and becoming intoxicated in her, when, moments later, the knocking started again.

“I MEAN it, Popeye and Olive!”

“Okay!” El shouted, and then she and Mike exchanged a sweet look. “We’d better get to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Mike told her. She snuggled into him, her face nuzzled against his chest, and he pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “Goodnight, El. I love you.”

“Goodnight, Mike. I love you too.”

And they drifted off into a peaceful sleep knowing that it would be years before they could embrace this novelty again. And that, in the next few months, the peace that this time together brought them would be challenged as El’s expanding powers would bring a sudden tidal wave in their steady stream of happiness together.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, after their weekend training, Mike and El decide to go home. They don't want to lose their chance to have Thanksgiving together AND they both need to get back to their normal lives the best that they can. This chapter will show the impact of their time way, and that Joyce and Karen are firm, but fair. Enjoy!

_11/24/86_

_Dear Mike,_

_I cant beleeve how luckey we got! After this weekend I thot Joyce wood be so mad that she wood not let us see eech other again but she will and so will your mom, and I am so exited that you will be with us on thanks giving after all! You only went home yesterday and I miss you so much all ready. It felt very lonly sleeping with out you. You are so cozey to snuggel with and I loved how you held me. It was the best I have slept in a relly long time. You also were such a good tutor on the bus too. Thank you for explayning the rules with ing; I alwayse found them confusing but you made it eazy to under stand._

_So I have been practicing what Kali teached me a lot and I am abel to move pretty big objects now. After Joyce yelld at us I think she new that it was good we were all working together now. She let me move some of her furnicher and I even got her big rocking chair across the apartment. I dont think our downsters naybor liked it much but Joyce said something about how they can blow it up their ass. I have not heard Joyce tak like that. She is in a werd mood._

_Will is in a werd mood too. I think that he and Paul had an argument which is werd because I did not even no they were friends. But he sed he was sad becase he went to a football game to tell Paul I was home and Paul yelld at him and sed something about how he is not like him. Do you think this is becos of what you told me? That Will was kissing a boy? Why is that bad? If you want to kiss someone, why does it matter if it is a girl or a boy or you are a girl or a boy? I thoght kissing was good. Why is that bad? I am mad at Paul for being meen to Will. I will tell him. I am not afred to tell Paul I am mad at him and I will let him no._

_Oh and your plan with Toney is working. Since he did not even see you and nobody else did we are sayeing that there is no way to prove that you punched him. Since he was reported by Marsee nobody believes him and that is what he deservs. Also Joyce told the police that I ran away becas he hurt me and I was afred becas some one beet him up for me and I did not want to get in troble and so now he dose not have a case becas Paul sed he saw him in my study spot before Toney went to the police. Now he is not even in my clases! He was moved to anothr co hort with all the same teechers but a difrent groop. I dont think Lisa cares and that they broke up and now she is makeing out with this boy Tom in the hallways. Good for Lisa, altho she is still meen sometimes._

_I cant wate to see you on thanks giving and show you how much I have learnt with Joyse and Will. I love you so much._

_Love,_

_El_

11/23/86

11:15 AM

Mike and El waited at the bus stop for the bus to take them back to her neighborhood in Illinois. Saying goodbye to Kali before they left for the bus stop was quick and informal. Kali once again tried to convince Jane to stay with her, but she insisted she would continue to train and keep in touch and she meant it. No hug, no handshake, nothing – just a quick goodbye later, and they were off.

Mike looked at her trying to figure out what she was thinking. He wanted her to open up to him but he certainly didn’t want to push, and he imagined that she had a world of emotions seeing her sister and working her mind and her body to push her powers to greater lengths.

After a while, though, the far off look on her face was too much.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his thumb brushing against her hand, which was resting softly in his. El turned to Mike, her eyes sad and far off.

“I don’t want it to end,” she told him. He gazed at her back, understanding completely. The last two days, as scary and challenging as they were, were probably the most time they’d spent together without anyone’s company. It was perfection; it was the way he wanted to live every day but couldn’t. Saying goodbye to that, especially knowing that all of the adults in their lives were bound to kill them, would not be easy.

“I don’t either,” Mike told her. “But hey…look at it this way. We know what it’s like, right? We know what the reward is. We know it’s worth the wait to see each other and it’ll be enough to give us something to look forward to.”

“I don’t want something to look forward to,” El told him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I just want you. Every day, I want you. I miss you so much when you’re away.”

“Me too,” Mike told her. “But we have to be strong, here. It’s the only way to get through it.”

“I’m so tired of being strong,” El admitted, feeling a bit ashamed to say that. “Why do I always have to be strong? Why can’t I just be happy?”

The words hit Mike’s heart like a truck and shattered it, because they were absolutely true. It was like the universe was against El from the moment she was born and refused to give her a chance to just enjoy her life and find happiness. 

That.

That was it.

When Mrs. Byers and his mom and whoever else freaked out, that’s what he’d remind them. El just wanted to feel safe and happy and she never, ever gets that chance. He wanted to give it to her for a short weekend. They’d understand. They’d have to.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

11/22/86  
3:45 PM

“WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? BOTH OF YOU!”

El and Mike turned to each other, wordless, numb. After getting off the bus, it wasn’t long on their walk home until they were spotted by a police officer, who apparently had been looking for El along with several other missing kids for the last two days. It was a tense ride to Mrs. Byers’ apartment, but they silently held hands and hoped that, somehow, she would be so happy they were home she would forget to freak out. He had hoped to explain everything to her before taking his own bus home scheduled at 4, but she reminded him that his mom was already on her way to try to find him, while her dad stayed home with Holly, and he knew that, as soon as the police officer left, they were going to get yelled at. Badly.

They knew that they had a good reason to go and find Kali, but Joyce was not at a point to reason right now and they had to be careful about how they approached this. Silence seemed a good option.

“Gone two days. TWO. DAYS. Not a phone call, not a trace, not having told anybody where you actually were…what if something happened to you? What if you were hurt? How would we ever find you?”

“Mrs. Byers, I…”

“You will let me finish!” Joyce said, pointing a finger in warning at Mike who immediately stopped speaking and let her blow off steam. Under the dining room table, where Joyce had sat the two of them down so she could scream at them, pacing, they tightly held hands. “I had to call your mother. I had to tell the police AND your mother some crazy story about how you ran off because you were afraid that Tony would hurt you since he tried to corner El again and he mysteriously got beaten up by someone. I had to lie TO THE POLICE and tell them that, nooooo, Mike Wheeler would never be able to beat up a guy like Tony. There’s no way that he would have assaulted a kid, especially since that kid had his vision obstructed by hairspray. PAUL had to lie and describe the boy who assaulted Tony and say it was someone who ran off; he had no idea who it was but it definitely wasn’t you.”

“He was going to hurt El!” Mike interrupted. At this, he couldn’t take being blamed. He was there to protect her, and, if he hadn’t come, who knows how far Tony would have taken it. He had her pressed against a wall and completely unable to defend herself. 

“Yes, and I understand, and, if it were me and this wasn’t a kid, trust me, Mike – TRUST ME – I would have done the same thing or gotten beaten up myself trying. And it would have been equally STUPID. Touching, moving, loyal, understandable? Yes. EXTREMELY STUPID? ALSO YES!”

The two remained quiet, their hands together, El’s shaking in Mike’s. Mike seriously thought she seemed more afraid of Joyce in this moment than she did while they had Kali directly in front of them who could have made them see any horrifying vision she wanted. 

“And where did you stay the last two nights, may I ask? Did you guys sleep on the streets of Chicago? Where were you?”

“We weren’t on the streets,” El volunteered, and Mike immediately wished that she had her telekinesis instantly back and gave him some too so that he could tell her in her head not to say where they actually were.

“Then where WERE you?” Joyce asked. 

“Hotel the first night. Then Kali’s warehouse.” 

There was a long, awkward pause. At first nobody said anything. Joyce looked at the two of them like she hardly believed it, like she couldn’t be sure what response would be the best. Then her face fell in anger and disappointment.

“A hotel?” She turned to Mike. “You two are FIFTEEN YEARS OLD and you spent the night together in a HOTEL?”

“We only slept together, I swear!” Mike stuttered.

“Excuse me?” Joyce asked, and Mike, red as a tomato, felt himself start to have heart palpitations as he realized how stupidly he phrased that.

“No, no, no, not like that! We’re not…we don’t…we’ve never…I meant, you know, as in literally slept. As in…you know…going to sleep? Nothing else happened, Mrs. Byers, I swear! It was just to stay off the streets and somewhere safe. I…I took the floor.”

“Yeah, and…” Mike lightly kicked El under the table and she turned to him and caught his eye. It was then she realized that perhaps volunteering that they were in the same bed wasn’t the best idea, even if all they did was snuggle and sleep.

“And what?” Joyce asked, looking at both of them closely.

“And…Mike was a gentleman. Polite. Made a bath for me. Let me pick what shows to watch and bought me snacks.” At this Joyce took a breath. She paced a bit more, tried to collect her thoughts, and sat across from them, looking at them firmly.

“I...can't believe I'm reacting like this. This is exactly what I told Hop not to do and it's what I'm doing. You both know that I don’t usually react like this,” she told them firmly. “I’m not a yeller. El, you know that. Have I ever yelled like this?” El shook her head. Joyce was firm in her rules, but she was soft spoken and fair. She didn’t typically lose her head like this. “I just want you to understand…Mike…I know you meant well, and I know you love El and you wanted to protect her. I do. But I am legally responsible for her and it was not right for you to take her away from her home and bring her somewhere without checking with me first. Hopper entrusted her to me and I LEGALLY need to know where she is at all times.” Mike nodded, but didn’t wish to stay silent on this matter.

“Mrs. Byers, with all due respect – I tried. I told you that El needed to protect herself and use her powers again. And you said no…”

“So that was it,” Joyce told him. “No. The end of the conversation…”

“Not when Holly is seeing things that are real. You already told us you knew about Tony – she saw that. She described it to me. She also described seeing something that I didn’t even tell her because nobody mentioned it to me – that Tony kissed El on her neck.”

Joyce breathed in deeply and looked down at her hands, as though hearing this really bothered her in ways she didn’t want either of them to see. 

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Joyce asked. Mike looked at his hands.

“It was El’s situation. I didn’t want to tell you something she didn’t feel comfortable telling you herself.”

“El,” Joyce said, this time softer, trying to meet El in her eyes and making herself far more approachable. “Why didn’t you tell me this happened?” El shrugged, feeling that usual lump in her throat suffocate her again every time she had to talk about Tony.

“I was embarrassed.”

“But El…you did nothing wrong,” Joyce assured her. “Listen, honey, you can’t be afraid to tell me things like this. That’s what I’m here for. I’m here to take care of you. I don’t care what winds up happening, as long as we have trust and we can tell each other the important things. I mean, sure, you'll have your own friends and relationships, and you can have some secrets that are yours, but when it comes to you being hurt or someone violating you, I NEED to know about it. That's NOT okay. And this…this was terrible, El. This should never have happened to you and I’m glad that this boy is not getting a speck of attention for his claim that Mike beat him up. Although Mike, I do have to say, you were extremely lucky. If they had gone further to interrogate you and it wasn’t Tony accusing you, you could have very well been tried on assault with your hands looking the way that they do.”

“It would be worth it,” Mike told her. He was surprised to see a rare smile out of her.

“I can’t disagree. Still…you both have to understand…this isn’t just about this. About this one weekend, this one instance. We are in a sticky situation here and El has powers that only we know about. We have to be responsible about it. I didn’t want to involve the police, guys, because the last thing El needs is to be interrogated by law enforcement. But you gave me no choice. You could have been sleeping under a bridge in Chicago somewhere. I had to make sure you were okay.” 

“I’m sorry,” El told her.

“El,” Joyce said, reaching her hand out for El to take. “Listen to me…there can’t be secrets here. There can’t be. You can trust me. I’m here to help you. When you were gone, it was like I lost my own daughter, sweetie.”

“Really?” El asked, her eyes glossing over. Joyce smiled.

“Really. And I’m not saying this in any way makes what you two did okay…but I understand. And since there are no secrets, there are some things I have to share with you, too. Before your mother gets here,” she added, turning to Mike. “Will should be here for this too.”

“Right here,” Will said, stepping into the room from the hallway.

“Were you listening?” Joyce asked. Will shrugged.

“Do you blame me?”

“Thanks, dude,” Mike mumbled, although he couldn’t help but smile. He missed Will, too, and the one good thing about this entire debacle of arriving home via police car was to run over to him and give him a hug as well, and to have him stand there like some kind of protective guard over him and El so Mrs. Byers wouldn’t scream at them in front of the police. Granted, as soon as she started in on them he ran, but that was beside the point.

“Anyway,” Mrs. Byers continued. “Will told me he’s noticed I’ve been away. Late at night. And I have. The reason I didn’t want you two looking is because…I suspect you’re right. I chose Illinois to get close to Murray Bauman; you all met him on the fourth of July. Hop’s odd friend. He has inside sources and suspected all along that Hop could still be alive. Right now, all we know is that he’s been pretty much confirmed as alive; there was a prisoner in a Russian prison, one who escaped and recently was rumored to come back to the United States. But there have been no further updates.”

“Wait…a Russian prison?” Mike asked. He turned to El. “Does it look like Hopper is in a prison when you see him?”

“I can’t tell,” El told him. “I see him but…the place is weird. I can’t see it. All I know is…Papa’s there with him. But I can’t tell where.” The four of them exchanged looks and all came to the same conclusion at the same time…

“Holly.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I can’t believe you were watching Holly, found out more about her visions and didn’t tell any of us,” Dustin told Max the next day, a scowl on his face. “I’m great with kids! I would have gotten it out of her just as well.”

“Wow, humble much?” Max asked, as she, Dustin and Lucas sat in a quiet corner of her skate park and Max shared updates. “The important thing is that she told me, right?”

“So what did she tell you?” Lucas asked, and Max filled them all in.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
11/21/86  
2:25 PM

_“I see a man hurting your friend,” Holly answered. Yes. This was the vision that Mike mentioned already and she didn’t know if she wanted to put her through the process of explaining it again. Besides, she wanted to get a sense of where Mike and El were now, and that wasn’t really helpful._

_“I’m so sorry,” Max told her. “Well, I mean, maybe it’s like my visions. Scary, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”_

_“I don’t know,” Holly replied, looking down._

_“Do you…ever see what people are doing, like, right now?” Max asked. Holly nodded, happy to change the subject._

_“Yeah. Sometimes it’s boring. Sometimes it’s kind of silly. Like I saw my sister Nancy trying to cook dinner and burning it and then her boyfriend pretended it was good anyway and her getting mad cause he lied.”_

_While this was amusing, Max had to admit, she wanted to dig deeper._

_“Hey – maybe you can help,” Max told her. “I mean…I don’t know if you’ve heard about Mike…”_

_“He’s missing,” Holly said sadly, looking down._

_“Yes, but, well…have you seen him in the last day? Can you see where he is?”_

_“I don’t usually see Mikey,” Holly told her. “But I see that girl, Jane. I saw her in the car on our way here.”_

_Yes! This was it!_

_“Is she okay? What’s she doing?”_

_“She’s doing weird things with her hand,” Holly said, flicking her hand around in El style. “Her nose is bleeding and she’s doing things with her hand.”_

_Yes!_

_El had gotten to Kali and the plan was working. El was using her powers. She was training. Maybe Mike wasn’t such an idiot after all!!_

_“And you know what else? But this is kind of weird.”_

_“What?” Max asked._

_“Yesterday I saw them sleeping. And he held her like a teddy bear. Is that weird?”_

_Max felt her heart turn to goo. Obviously, Mike held El when she went to sleep. It was also clear that this was appropriate or else Holly would have expressed disgust at what she’d seen. They were safe. They were taking care of each other. They would be okay._

_“It’s…sweet,” Max told her. Holly smiled widely._

_“Are you jealous? Do you like my brother?” Holly asked, that gossip-seeking grin on her face returning.. Max almost cringed, but settled for laughing._

_“Not like that, Holly! I mean, he’s my friend, but, no, I don’t boyfriend-girlfriend like him.”_

_“Too bad,” Holly told her. “I like you. I like Jane too. But I like you, Max.”_

_Max realized in that moment how much she needed to hear something like that. It was rare that anyone ever outwardly said how much they enjoyed her company, because a lot of people didn’t. Max wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows. She wasn’t always easy to like. But Holly – this child who didn’t attach herself to many people – liked her._

_“Thank you, Holly. I like you, too.”_

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

“So they’re okay,” Dustin reiterated. “That’s the most important thing, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Lucas said, his voice still doubtful. “But we still don’t know where they are. We still don’t know how long they plan on being away. Besides, how do we know she’s training?”

“Holly is a sensitive kid,” Max retorted evenly and calmly, seeing Lucas’s point and trying not to belittle him this time. “She gets upset when she sees other people upset. When El was being hurt by Brenner, her face fell. She looked sad. Unless it’s something ridiculous, like Nancy ruining Jonathan’s dinner, she gets a sense for things. She didn’t seem to think that El was in trouble. She just said she was moving her hand weird and her nose was bleeding. She’s got to be training. Besides, she couldn’t do anything a mere two days ago. In her last letter to me she said she was still trying to open her combination lock but couldn’t. There’s no way she could be fighting someone full on this quickly.”

“I can’t believe they slept in bed together,” Dustin said, part in awe and part impressed. “That’s so…”

“None of our business and just an indication that he’s keeping her safe,” Max interrupted, cutting him off. Knowing how serenely El and Mike slept, a piece of her wanted to protect them from their teasing and gossip.

“Well…what do we do?” Dustin asked. “Do we tell Mrs. Byers?”

“We should tell Will,” Lucas said. “Mrs. Byers might flip out if she hears about their sleeping arrangements."

“Let’s go to Cerebro,” Dustin said, and they all nodded in agreement and made their way toward the highest point in Hawkins.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

11/22/86  
5:00 PM

“Michael!” Mrs. Wheeler came running into the Byers apartment, and, tears in her eyes, threw her arms around Mike, who returned the hug, shaking. He hoped beyond anything that he wasn’t about to be screamed at a second time, although he had to admit that the reprimanding he got from Mrs. Byers was much less severe than he feared it would be. Much to his surprise, after she hugged him, Mrs. Wheeler reached over to Jane and hugged her as well. “Oh, my God, I’m SO relieved you two are okay! I was worried sick!”

At this, Will realized that he hadn’t yet called Leslie or Paul to tell them that El had returned. Leslie would be easy enough to call, but Paul had his football game.

“Mom,” he said to Joyce as Mrs. Wheeler continued to embrace Mike and El. “Mom, can I go over to the school? Paul has his game and I want to let him know El came back. He did stay with us all day on Friday.”

“Just go to the game and come right back,” Joyce told him. “Hurry up or you’ll miss them leaving.” Will hurried out of the front door past Mike, El and Mrs. Wheeler, and Joyce joined them in the hallway.

“What happened?” Mrs. Wheeler asked everyone. “Where WERE you?”

Mike looked wordlessly at Joyce, forgetting her story and wanting it to be just right. Joyce took the hint and continued.

“It’s like we thought. Mike went after this boy Tony who was bullying Jane, apparently knocked him out. They got scared and stayed hidden at her friend’s house for the weekend,” Joyce lied convincingly well. “Only…the police don’t think that Mike actually touched Tony since he didn’t actually see him. I kind of…skipped over that part and said he just wanted to keep her hidden from him. Jane’s friend Paul kept it going with a fake description of the person he claims beat Tony up.”

Karen turned to Mike, in shock.

“You beat someone up? Michael!”

“He hurt E…Jane twice. He tried to...he tried to force himself on her, and I couldn't take it anymore. No guy should ever do that to any girl, especially not her,” Mike insisted. “It just...it made me so mad. I lost it. I don’t know what got into me, Mom. We just got…scared. That I’d…get arrested.”

“You’re very lucky Mrs. Byers came up with the story that she did,” Karen said. “Did you hurt yourself?” Mike showed Mrs. Wheeler his bandaged hands, and she gasped and took a close look at them. “MICHAEL! What did you DO to this boy?”

“I…got angry,” Mike told her. There was a moment of silence where everyone just sat awkwardly, not sure of what to say. Mrs. Wheeler took a breath and looked at him. 

“Well…the most important thing is that I came here to see the two of you okay. I certainly wasn’t expecting that. But I really wish you would have called someone; told us where you were. Nothing would have happened to Jane if she was here.”

“We were afraid,” El lied, and Mike looked at her, impressed. “That he would…follow me home. Know where I lived.”

Joyce and Mike quickly exchanged amazed glances. How did she learn how to lie so convincingly well?

“I also reported that this Tony boy cornered Jane in the stairwell,” Mrs. Byers said. “Given this is the second charge of assault against him on record the school is keeping a close eye on him. As are the police. If he steps another foot out of line, nobody is covering him. I am also going to march right in there in school on Monday and insist that he be removed from Jane’s classes. She’s showing great progress and he isn’t. He’s been a threat to her on more than one occasion and it’s going to be up to them to fix this.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike told Mrs. Byers and his mother, and a very, very small piece of him meant it. “I know I should have told you both where I was going. But…I care about Jane a lot. I…love her.” The looks on the faces of both women softened a bit. “And I know that I scared you both, but…she’s had such a hard life. She’s been through so much. I felt so bad that she was dealing with this and that she was scared. So…I did what I thought she would have done for me. And it was stupid and thoughtless and we shouldn’t have hidden from everyone. But…well, I wasn’t thinking. And I’d totally understand if you didn’t let us get together on Thanksgiving now…”

“No, that’s still on as long as it’s okay with Mrs. Byers,” Mrs. Wheeler said. 

“Yes, why wouldn’t we?” Mrs. Byers asked. 

El and Mike exchanged relieved, happy looks.

“Really?” Mike asked.

“Michael…you’ve both been through a lot. More than most kids your age. And…it’s surprised me that you’ve been so GOOD about all of it, done well in school, saved money, worked hard every weekend at that store. You had a thoughtless moment and I’m not pleased about it…but you deserve to be happy. Jane deserves to be happy.”

“I completely agree,” Mrs. Byers said.

“So…that means…I mean, I’m not…”

“Oh, yes, there WILL be a consequence for lying and scaring the hell out of everyone,” Mrs. Wheeler insisted. “I’m thinking something along the lines of not going on that Atari for, say, another four weeks. Coming straight home after school without any visits to the arcade or your friends' houses. And taking over Holly’s chores during the week.”

“Fine,” Mike said, nodding and hardly believing his luck. He would have given up anything – anything at all – to have the chance to spend the next long weekend with El again.

“Yes, and, Jane, that sounds about right,” Joyce chimed in. “I think you’ll have to ask Leslie’s grandma what happened on All My Children in the next two weeks, because I won’t be taping it for you.” El also nodded enthusiastically. Neither one of them expected that their parents would take this so well and that they got off easy with just a few missed games and shows. They’d get to be together in just a few days – just another three days!

Mrs. Byers and Mrs. Wheeler kept talking a bit about the logistics for the next weekend and extra precautions that would be taken to ensure the kids would be safe and wouldn’t run off again when Mike’s hand slipped into El’s, and the two exchanged a happy smile.

How did they get so lucky?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Will wasn’t sure how best to approach Paul when he was preparing for a game. He couldn’t just walk into the locker room and go over to him. That would be weird. Should he wait until he was on the field and very quickly tell him? Would that draw too much attention?

Standing in the bleachers and contemplating this, he looked around at the crowds of people ready for a game. He’d never been to one. Maybe he should go; see what it was like, see how Paul played.

If things were different – if he were like Mike, Lucas, or Dustin, and he wanted to see the person he liked do something, he could. Now, he just felt…weird. Like he wasn’t supposed to. It didn’t seem fair.

What also didn’t seem fair was that El and Mike returned, they were safe, and his mind just kept going back to Paul; his hand on his knee. He couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t just him; that there was some kind of exchange. Was there? Was it all in his head?

His thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Paul on the field, donning a white and blue football uniform. He looked so completely perfect; chiseled and athletic and just ready for action on the field. Something about his drive, his determination, the sheer perfection with which he did absolutely everything he tried, both amazed and depressed Will. He was so above him in every way it wasn’t funny. Will could never be a fraction of the idealism that Paul was. Was he crazy to think that these thoughts were mutual? Was it just him?

Courage won as he saw Paul walking to the water fountain for a breather or a drink; whatever it was. He hurried over to him and stood by the fountain.

“Hey, Paul…guess what?” 

However, much to Will’s dismay, Paul didn’t respond. Didn’t look at him. Acted as though he didn’t even speak.

“Paul…it’s me. It’s Will.”

“I’m getting ready for a game here,” Paul very quickly replied, not even looking up. His reaction startled Will; made him completely confused. Was this the same guy who stayed at his house all night on Friday to see if El was okay? Who comforted Will when he was getting upset and nervous?

“I just wanted you to know that Jane came back. She’s okay,” Will very quickly replied. 

“Great,” Paul told him. “The girl who’s been leading me on and her boyfriend came back. Wonderful.”

Leading him on?

Anger surged through Will’s veins on both his behalf and El’s. Paul knew damn well that El had never led him on; that the only thing she ever made clear that she wanted out of their relationship was tutoring and, at most, friendship. It was one thing for Paul to be a dick to Will, but to come after El after all she had been through was infuriating.

“What are you talking about?” Will asked. “You know that’s not true!”

“You seem like a smart guy, Byers,” Paul replied, once again dodging his gaze and looking down at the water fountain. “Look at me. Look at you and Jane. Do you honestly think I’d have anything to do with either of you if I wasn’t looking to date her? You don’t think she’s figured this out? Maybe she’s not as stupid as you think she is. Maybe she’s playing both me and that boyfriend of hers for a fool and likes the attention from both of us.”

At this, Will lost all control. Paul was never like this – arrogant, condescending, cocky, demeaning. In all the times they’d interacted he always struck him as humble. What happened?

“You KNOW damn well she's nothing like that. What the hell is your problem?” Will asked. “This…weren’t you the one who came to ME on Friday afternoon? Where do you get off acting all high and mighty?”

“Where do you get off acting like you know me? I was with you one afternoon, and it was to get in JANE’S good graces. No offense, Byers, but…back off, okay? I’m not…I’m not like YOU. I like GIRLS.”

The words slammed into Will like a punch in the gut. They so deeply echoed the words Mike spoke to him that summer, although Mike didn’t mean them in the same way. Not pointedly. Not to make fun of what Paul was clearly trying to make fun of in Will.

“Go to Hell,” Will heard himself say, hardly believing he was saying it. 

“Real mature, Byers. Look, when you see your friend, Leslie, tell her to stop giving you false hopes, will you?” 

Leslie?

LESLIE had something to do with this?

“What do you…”

“Go home, Will. Just…go home,” At that, Paul joined his teammates and acted as though he and Will hadn’t even spoken. Will watched in anger and sadness, begging himself not to start crying as the first person he ever allowed himself to feel any vulnerability about threw him to the dirt like a piece of garbage.

Leslie…

It was time to go have a chat.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Will, do you copy? It’s Dustin!”

Mike heard Will’s radio from the living room, where he and El were sitting and watching TV while Joyce offered Karen coffee. After calling Ted to assure him that Mike was there and safe, and make sure he told Holly, the two of them were chatting to lighten the air a little bit. Mike turned to El, who was leaning comfortably against him.

“It’s Dustin,” he told her, then turned to Joyce. “Mrs. Byers, Dustin is radioing Will, but he left. Do you think he’ll mind if I answer to tell them we’re home?”

“No, of course not,” Joyce answered. “Please. The last thing we need is them running on the next bus here too.” Mike and El hurried into Will’s room as Mike picked up the radio.

“Dustin? It’s Mike,”

“Mike!” Dustin enthusiastically replied. “Holy shit, you had us all worried sick! You’re home? Is El with you? Did you beat the shit out of this guy? What happened?”

“Alright, guys, calm down,” Mike told them, not able to conceal his laughter. He told them the story of where they had been in the last couple of days, hearing Dustin, Lucas and Max reply in the background. They all seemed to be excited that El’s powers were starting to work again and that they managed to get through the whole debacle with minimum punishments.

“I can’t believe Mrs. Byers and your mom haven't killed you guys,” Dustin repeated at the end. “I mean, especially considering, you know, your sleeping arrangements.” Mike and El looked at one another confused, then turned back to the radio. Mike nudged El to close the door guessing at what this was about, and then whispered into the phone.

“What sleeping arrangements?” There was a long awkward pause until Max took the radio.

“Holly…may have mentioned seeing you…holding El like a teddy bear.”

“You talked to Holly?” Mike asked, suddenly getting a bit defensive and angry. 

“She’s the only one who could have possibly seen where you were,” Max told him calmly. “I had to try.”

“She’s six years old!” Mike loudly grumbled, although he tried his best to keep his volume down so that his mom and Mrs. Byers wouldn’t hear him. “She’s not…some criminal for you to interrogate.”

“I didn’t TREAT her like a criminal!” Max told him. “Your mom was making phone calls and trying to find you, so I offered to watch her for the day. In fact, she likes me. She even said so.”

“Right, after you played nice to get information out of her!” Mike insisted. “That’s my baby sister you’re using like a robot!”

“Mike,” El told him, her quiet voice soothing and calming. He looked at her – felt her reassuring hand on his - and softened a bit. 

"Sorry, sorry, it's just...you know, I'm her brother. I just...I worry." Still angry, however, he decided rather to offer the radio to El and calm himself. El took it.

“Did Holly see…anything else?” El asked, hoping beyond hope that Holly didn’t see their intense make out session moments before this. She heard funny noises in the background as it sounded like the boys were trying to suppress a laugh and failing miserably.

“Um, no,” Max told her, also trying to hide her amusement. “Was there anything TO see, El?”

“No,” El answered quickly, and Max started laughing. 

“El, I swear, you’re adorable. It’s priceless.”

“Enough about this,” Mike said a bit less forcefully, gently taking the radio back. “Okay…I see the point. Holly can see things. In fact, I’m ashamed to admit it, but...I’m going to have to see if she can see more. Because Mrs. Byers and that weirdo Mr. Bauman she brought to Starcourt have it in confidence that Hop is alive. El saw a vision of him with Dr. Brenner…her papa who kept her in the lab. We think he’s got him trapped as a way to find out where El is.”

“Or to lure her to him,” Dustin said, grabbing the radio. “If this guy raised El – trained her powers to be what they are – how do you know this isn’t a trap and he’s baiting her right to him?”

El turned to Mike, each deep in thought. That thought wasn’t a consideration with them, but Mike looked at El for a more authentic response to that concern. Nobody knew Papa and his understanding of her powers more than she did.

“Papa…doesn’t know all there is to know about my powers,” El told them, and Mike sighed deeply in relief. “I hid things from him.”

“Are you sure you did?” Dustin asked. “Maybe he hid things from you, too.” El never thought about that; perhaps all the secrecy she had in images that she saw and what she was or wasn’t capable of doing weren’t really hidden from Papa at all. Maybe he really did know her abilities.

“That’s a fair point,” Mike said. “We’ll be cautious. But we have to try. El is going to keep training her powers and we’ll try to see if Holly can help us. Appropriately. The last thing I want is Brenner finding out about her, too.”

“We’ll do whatever we can to help,” Lucas chimed in. “If you need anything, just say the word.”

“Thanks,” El told him, and she and Mike interlocked fingers and exchanged a smile. Despite the Holly debacle, it was nice to know they had such good friends.

“Hey…why are you answering Will’s radio anyway? Where is he?” Dustin asked. The two exchanged confused looks. He left for the game over an hour ago. Where could he have gotten to?

____________________________________________________

For the second day in a row, Leslie was started by the sound of a loud knock on her door. If this was Paul, again, she would recommend her therapist to him and call it a day. He could certainly use it.

She opened the door to see Will, tears in his eyes, furious.

“Byers? What the hell happened to you? Is Hopper okay?”

“She’s back. She’s fine. Which is more than I could say for myself,” Will told her, stomping into her apartment as she stepped out of the way to let him in. 

Oh, no.

Paul must have done something to be a total asshole to Will. That closeted, chiseled, perfect piece of shit! How could he?

“What happened?” Leslie asked. Will looked at her angrily.

“YOU happened! Things were going fine with Paul – he and I were cool – and you weirded him out telling him that I liked him.”

“Don’t you?” Leslie asked, throwing her arms in the air in frustration. “I mean – I thought that was obvious.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Will called out angrily, tears falling rapidly from his eyes. “Don’t you get it, Leslie? Nothing like that is ever going to happen for me. I’m fine just…letting it lie.”

“No, I don’t get it!” Leslie answered, sitting alongside him and reaching for his hand, which he quickly jerked away. “I’m serious, Will. What do you mean, nothing like that is ever going to happen for you? What, because the people you like happen to not be females it means that you can’t pursue them like any other teenager with a crush in the goddamn world? That’s unfair and it sucks!”

“Well, that’s life!” Will told her. “Everything is unfair and sucks. It’s unfair and it sucks that my dad left my mom alone. That she fell in love twice since then and one guy died in front of her and the other is missing and presumed dead. That El was raised in a lab and abused by some asshole that is still out there! That people like me are never going to know what love is like because the moment we like someone people look at us like we’re on a first class ticket straight to Hell because of it!”

“Well, that’s THEIR problem!” Leslie told him. “Will, look at me! People look at me like I’m some demonic, satanic freak on a daily basis. Do I give a shit? No. Not at all. They’re morons and I’m not going to change who I am to make morons feel more comfortable about me. And neither should you!”

“That’s easy for you to say!” Will told her. “They look at you over make up. They look at me over who I like. I can’t just wipe that away with a tissue if I want to.” Leslie wrapped an arm around his shoulder, and this time he let her.

“I’m sorry,” Leslie told him. “Paul came here looking for Jane, but it was just…very obvious…that he was looking for you. So, I opened my big mouth and he shouldn’t have taken it out on YOU. That sucks of him.”

“I wish you didn’t say anything,” Will told her, feeling his anger at her subside since she was good enough to admit her mistake and apologize. Leslie breathed in deeply.

“You know he totally likes you back, right?”

“What?” Will asked, turning to Leslie in confusion. “He accused El of leading him on.”

“He WHAT?” Leslie asked, standing up and starting to pace in anger. “What, because he’s trying to hide his own repressed sexual orientation, it’s okay to demonize Hopper in this, too? What kind of closeted, big-headed…”

“He said he’s nothing like me. That he likes girls,” Will told her. Leslie manically laughed, and knelt in front of Will looking him right in his sad eyes.

“No, he doesn’t,” she assured him. “He’s had girls throwing themselves at him for years. If he did like girls, he would have gone for one already. He said that because he knows damn well I’m right and he’s ashamed to admit it. And that’s not your problem, Will. It’s his. He’s not ready. Which is fine, but to take it out on you just because you are? That sucks.” At this, Will let the tears run faster, steadier. He couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“I’m just so sick of it,” he told her. "I wish...I just wish I could be different." Leslie placed her hand to his cheek, her heart breaking at seeing Will like this. She’d never seen anyone so broken.

“Byers…it’s okay, baby. You’ll be okay.” She wrapped her arms around him and let him cry in her chest – convulsing – and, with each heave of his breath, she wanted to punch Paul in the face with as much force as Mike hit Tony.

Things were going to get worse way before they got better.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! This chapter turns the direction of the story a bit. I just want to preface by saying that it features a character who was in the ST book Suspicious Minds. If you didn't read it, as a background note, there was a character, Alice, who was in the lab as an experimental subject with Terry. She had visions of El very early through use of electromagnetic therapy. I have long since suspected she would be a useful character and a tie to get some answers to what the Upside Down actually is and how that gate could be closed forever. Get ready for things to pick up and get a little bumpy...and for some Lumax fluff, just because I felt it was needed. :)

_11/25/86_

_Dear El,_

_How is it possible that I just saw you on Sunday and it feels like I haven’t seen you forever? Those two days together got me so used to having you around. It was so nice to be together all day, just the two of us…even if we were training your powers. That’s the thing with you. We could even be doing something scary or weird and I’d still feel happy because you’re around. You’re the best! I am so excited to see you tomorrow night again!_

_Things are going pretty well at school. I got my midterms back and got really good grades, which softened the blow when it came to my dad. My mom was forgiving, but he wasn’t; gave me a talking to about how I hurt my Mom and lying and worrying her like that was totally inconsiderate, and how family comes before what he called superficial teenage romance. Ugh, I’m THANKFUL to be getting out of this house for Thanksgiving! After I went to bed, he and my mom started arguing about the whole thing; she says he’s too set in his ways and that he’s got to be open minded to the fact that my feelings are real and he kept just shouting, “He’s fifteen years old!” like that means I’m too young to feel anything yet. I mean…my Mom and Dad love each other, in their own weird way, but sometimes it can be hard when they disagree over stuff like this. My dad is way stubborn and won’t admit he’s wrong. Holly heard and came running in to my room and asking if she could stay with me. Of course, I let her. I feel really bad for her. There were at least some good times when I was little and lately they just keep disagreeing on things._

_She’s been really stressed lately since Mom and Dad have been fighting so I haven’t asked her about Hopper yet. I don’t want her to catch on that we’re all kind of using these visions of hers to get information. She’s still just a kid. After Thanksgiving, when I come back, maybe, unless it comes up naturally before then._

_As far as Will, those are some very good questions. To tell you the truth, it shouldn’t matter. It’s just that a lot of time people have beliefs – you know, religion, stuff we talked about when we were reviewing your history notes – that tell you that things like that are bad and only bad people do them; that good people fall in love with the opposite gender and all of that. But I don’t get that. I mean, some people believe in God – in some higher power that made everything. I don’t know if I do or not. I think so; sometimes I do. But I think that if there is a God who made everything, that He’d love what he made. You know, like parents love their kids. And I don’t think that anyone who loves someone should stop them from kissing whoever they want. As long as it’s not, like, a grown up and a kid or something gross like your relative. People can be really, really mean about it, which is probably how Paul was. I don’t know why he’d be that way; that’s really weird. Just don’t push the issue with Will. He’ll talk about it when he’s ready. He may not be comfortable yet._

_Anyway, keep training with Will and Joyce. I’m glad to hear it’s going well and you’re proud of your progress. This time, I’m not lying. I really DO have a good feeling._

_I’ll see you on Wednesday. I can’t wait! Love you!_

_Love,_

_Mike_

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Come again?”

Murray looked at Joyce with annoyance and disgust, which is exactly what she expected. She had Tuesday off and decided to use the time catching up with Murray and letting him know what had happened over the weekend.

She knew he wouldn’t approve, but she didn’t know exactly how badly he’d react.

“My hands were tied, Murray!” Joyce exclaimed. “There is stuff going on with these kids that could lead us right to Hop, and, what, we’re supposed to ignore it and keep pulling at straws like we’ve been?”

“We have NOT been pulling at straws, thank you very much!” Murray exclaimed, pacing and finding it hard to make eye contact with her. “We’ve narrowed it down to four different possible locations based on the articles we’ve found on blackouts and unusual happenings…”

“And now we can narrow it down to ONE! We now have not only one child with visions, but one fully capable of having them return who is training her powers to work again. Why the hell shouldn’t we use that?”

“Oh, I don’t know…maybe because they’re CHILDREN!” Murray exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air like he couldn’t tolerate her level of stupidity. “Impulsive CHILDREN who don’t have the ability to really control or regulate the ridiculous amount of power they’ve been given!”

“El isn’t impulsive…”

“NOOOO, she just went sneaking off to a hotel with her 15-year-old boyfriend and didn’t tell anyone where she was!”

“NOTHING HAPPENED!” Joyce demanded, walking directly into Murray’s face. “Don’t make it sound like that. You don’t KNOW this kid. You don’t KNOW what she’s like, what her boyfriend is like.”

“She’s a kid, and that’s all I need to know. There are two things I don’t deal with, and those are pets and children. Neither speak my language. I’m out.”

“You’re out?” Joyce asked, her face flushed red. “So, what, you’re not even going to try to find Hopper anymore?”

“Oh, I am,” Murray continued. “I am because I’m sure that he’s got more information on the Russians than any other person I have access to at the moment, and, I suppose, yes, it may be pleasant to see he’s still in one piece, if indeed he is.”

“Then let’s be smart about it,” Joyce urged him, grabbing his arm and stopping his pacing. “Murray, I know you don’t like kids, I know they’re not your cup of tea, but this is the closest to a father she’s ever had and we’ve withheld too much from her for too long. We can help her, and she – she can help us!”

“I’m not interested in whatever abilities were drilled into this juvenile when she was in diapers,” Murray countered, taking his arm back. “I work off of evidence and logic and predictability. Powers that people aren’t supposed to have mixed with teenage hormones are both a recipe for the polar opposite of logic and predictability.”

“Listen, at least…think about it, will you? Please? You say you don’t want people to be impulsive – don’t be impulsive yourself!” Murray took a second to breathe, grabbed a glass for himself and poured some brandy into it.

“It’s not even 10 AM!” Joyce exclaimed. Murray gave her a dirty look and took a sip of his drink.

“Well, it’s five o’clock somewhere, isn’t it?” Joyce didn’t argue and he took another swig, then refilled the glass.

“Joyce, I will consider your plea to work together on this,” he continued. “But you have to control that kid. And whatever kids go along with her. I can’t deal with the smell of teen angst.”

“Fair enough,” Joyce said. “I’ve got some errands and things I need to run. We’ll be in touch.” She left Murray to his AM liquor buzz and walked out.

As much as Murray was a stick in the mud, he did express some things that she feared. El was, in her older age, becoming more impulsive. Joyce hoped that this wouldn’t cause her to do anything silly at school, especially with the threat of Tony – out of her class but still in the building – hanging over her head. It was the last thing she needed.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

El looked in the direction of Paul’s locker before study hall that day and her eyes narrowed.

He was supposed to be at tutoring yesterday and he didn’t show up. But she knew that he was in school. She passed him in the hallway a few times and he didn’t even so much as look at her. After leaving the library, she saw him on the field with his football friends, so there’s no way he could say he was busy. First he was mean to Will, now he was backing out of tutoring? What was his problem?

Leslie told her to just leave well enough alone, which was unlike Leslie, who was usually the first to encourage her to tell someone off. Will came home from her house really upset about something and wouldn’t tell El or Joyce what was bothering him, but El knew it had to do with Paul. He left the house to see him at the game and came back upset. After El tried to get something out of him, all he said was that Paul yelled and said he “wasn’t like him”, whatever that meant.

She wouldn’t force Will to talk about it, but she wouldn’t tolerate this from Paul.

She marched right over to him and looked at him straight in the face.

“Hi,” she told him. He looked at her awkwardly, coldly, as though he wasn’t sure what to say to her.

“Hey?” he asked.

“What’s going on?” El asked. “You didn’t come to tutoring yesterday.”

“I…wasn’t feeling so good,” Paul lied, turning his attention to his locker and ignoring her. El, frustrated, persisted.

“You were in the yard with the other football players,” she told him. “I saw you as I left.”

“I…needed air. It made me feel better,“ Paul continued, still going through his books. Frustration filled El’s entire body. She HATED being lied to – she spent her entire childhood being lied to. This won’t hurt. This isn’t so bad. There’s nothing to be afraid of. This is what’s best for you. Nana’s sick. Lies. Every single claim. She was tired of it. If anyone lied to her, it did something to her self-control.

While Paul’s head was turned, she thought of that image of Mike on the floor in Kali’s warehouse. She felt a frequency fill her body. A little flick of her head and all of the books in Paul’s locker fell onto the floor. He jumped back.

She quickly wiped her nose.

“What the hell?” Paul asked. He turned to El, angry. “How…how did that…”

“You’re clumsy,” El insisted, her eyes not leaving his. If he could lie, so could she.

“No, no I’m the least clumsy person ever,” Paul insisted. “I couldn’t play football and be clumsy. Did you…”

“Are you saying I somehow moved those books…standing over here?” El asked, doing a really convincing job of making him sound crazy. “Maybe you do need air.”

“This…I can’t take this. This. This is why I didn’t want to tutor you yesterday, Jane. Why I don’t want to tutor you anymore.”

“Because you’re clumsy?” El asked, sincerely confused, although still borrowing some of Mike and Kali’s combined attitude just to aggravate him more.

“Because you’re WEIRD!” Paul exclaimed so loudly that other people in the hallway stopped to look. El felt herself flush red and the eyes of every person in the corridor focusing on her. But he didn’t stop there. His tirade had only just begun. “You show up here…you can barely TALK, you have the vocabulary of a FOUR-YEAR-OLD, and you meet ME – and I’m on the football team, I’m popular – but _you’re_ not interested in _me_? You invite your two weirdo friends on the date I ask you out on…who DOES that? And you wonder why I can’t tutor you anymore? And then…then you walk around like you’re better than I am. LOOK AT YOU! Look at ME! Anyone in this school, anyone in the WORLD can tell you who would get the better deal of the two of us if you were to actually express, I don’t know, the slightest interest in me, but you, for some reason, what, because you happen to be kind of cute and now you’ve advanced to fifth grade math at the age of 15, you think that YOU can reject ME? For some…awkward guy who looks like an overgrown pencil with hair? I mean…that’s not normal! Nothing about you is normal! And I’m SICK OF IT!”

As soon as the last of his words exited his throat, Paul looked at Jane – at her fallen, hurt, shocked face – and hated himself.

He just sounded just like his father. AND his mother. He abused her with his words the same way they abused him because they were insecure, sad and petty.

The truth was, every word Leslie said was right. Every word. He harbored a fascination for Will secretly since he first saw him at school, was more than pleased to help out when he found out Will’s mother needed a tutor for his sort-of sister, and he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him, as much as he tried to suppress it. But he couldn’t admit that, and he couldn’t have Will, because, if he did, everything he had handed to him on a platter would be taken away. He’d lose his parents. He’d lose his friends. He’d have people look at him with laughter and mockery the way that everyone was looking at him and Jane at this exact moment. 

So he just felt…anger. Resentment. Fury that the world had to be so unfair and make him born like THIS and not like any of the other guys on the team who could just hook up with a girl and be happy about it. And it was too much to hold on his head.

If only she would have just liked him, he could have faked a relationship with her easily. She didn’t seem one to be into affection and intimacy. They could just call themselves a couple and talk. It would solve all of his problems. But she didn’t. Not only didn’t she, but she didn’t see that image of perfection that every single person saw. She saw someone just as weak and flawed and human as anyone else. She – this person who was seen as a total freak by just about everybody else – stood on some pedestal like she had some hold over him without even knowing she was doing it. And she shouldn’t. Who the hell was she, anyway?

All of this made sense floating around in his head. But when he spit it out – when his anger, frustration and impulses compelled him to sting her with those words like a jellyfish, when he saw her eyes fill with tears, and yet stay steady and angry – he realized how wrong he was.

She was above him. She was above all these fake assholes in this school because she was the only one who had the courage to be who she was. She didn’t date the popular football player who was right there at her convenience. She dated the gawky, awkward nerd miles away because she loved him and, unlike him, unlike most people, she wasn’t embarrassed by what she felt.

She was everything he should be.

And a part of him hated her for it.

But that was wrong. And she would let him know for certain just how wrong he was.

The hallway stood frozen for a moment. Some people watched in amusement. Some people looked at him like he was the biggest asshole on the planet, which he deserved and he knew it.

Still, that didn’t prepare him for what came next.

He felt a sharp sting as El’s hand slapped him directly in his face, and spit out words he never thought he’d hear come out of her mouth.

“Fuck you.”

The sound seemed to echo in the hallway. A group of girls started clapping and cheering. One shouted, “Yeah, you tell him!” He turned to see everyone staring, most with amused or triumphant smiles on their faces. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I can’t believe you’re bailing on two weekends in a row and Keith is letting you keep your job,” Steve vented to Mike that afternoon in the video store as the two of them were alphabetizing the returns and new videos behind the desk. Mike smiled tauntingly at him.

“He likes me, Keith. What can I say? Maybe stop stealing every girl he likes from him and he’ll like you too.”

“Listen, I was born with irresistible charm. It’s not something that I can help,” Steve joked. Mike rolled his eyes, although he had to admit, he wondered how Steve did it. Most of the girls who came in fell under his spell. Was it really just the hair?

“Yeah, Keith wasn’t exactly blessed with that,” Mike joked. Steve groaned and placed a new pile of tapes on the counter and started looking through them.

“Please, kid. We all know who was blessed here, and it wasn’t me,” he retorted. Mike gazed at him, confused.

“Okay…I know that there’s no possible way you could be talking about me,” Mike laughed. Steve gave him a scowl and went back to his tapes, and Mike couldn’t hold in his laughter. “Are you kidding? Dude…look at me. Look at you. I mean, come on.”

“That would be common sense, and ordinarily I’d agree with you, string bean,” Steve teased. “But, the truth is, you managed to find yourself a girl that you actually like, you’ve got her wrapped around your little finger, and the rest of us are losing are minds trying to demystify these creatures.”

“Trust me, I’m no master,” Mike told him, turning red. He knew he was lucky with El, because he loved her, but he wasn't always a master with her and he knew that. Besides, he didn’t think that having one girlfriend would be considered lucky by male standards. He thought Steve and most guys were interested in having multiple girls, not just one.

“Yeah, but…you know, you have a girl and she’s special,” Steve continued, looking down at his tapes and smiling to himself. “I…I had it once, but I blew it.”

“Nancy?” Mike joked, never getting over that anyone could view his big sister in any kind of romantic context. “She’s my sister and I love her…but…I mean, she’s just…Nancy. You still…you like her like that?”

“Not anymore. Not really,” Steve told him. “But…you know…she was special. When I had her, you know?”

“Sorry, I can’t relate to dating my sister,” Mike teased. Steve shook his head, snorting. 

“I’m going to the stock room. You know, you try BONDING with a guy…” Mike laughed to himself as Steve retreated into the stockroom, where Robin was just leaving.

Robin…

There had been something he meant to talk to Robin about for the last week and he didn’t know how to bring it up. She went to ring up two customers in front of the store while Mike gathered his courage and walked over to her.

“Hey, Robin? Can I ask you something?” Mike asked, trying to sound casual and not the least bit nervous. 

“I told you, Dingus Junior, it’s just a TEST in case of an ACTUAL emergency. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Robin teased. Mike let out an awkward laugh. Robin was snarky, but he appreciated her sass.

“Seriously, though,” he said. “I mean…there’s been something I thought, I don’t know, you could give me some advice on.” She looked up from the paperwork she was writing and seemed intrigued.

“Ohhh, this sounds juicy,” she said. “You having problems with El? Maybe you can do something different and super romantic…like dedicate a song to her! You know, on her local radio station. Or, no, no, no, I have a GREAT idea…”

“No, no, El and I are fine,” Mike continued. “This is about…a friend.”

“A FRIEND?” Robin repeated, making air quotation marks before picking up a soda from the counter and taking a sip. Mike rolled his eyes.

“I’m being serious. Look…I just found out a friend of mine…I mean, what I mean is…” he took a deep breath, not wanting to accidentally approach this in a way that was offensive, and, in his graceful level of teenage stupidity, blurted out his next thought. “You…date girls, right?” Robin spit out the soda that she just drank, looking at him in surprise.

“DAMN!” Robin replied. “You just…come right out and say it, don’t you?”

“No, no, it’s…I mean, I don’t think there’s ANYTHING wrong with…”

“No worries, DJ. I mean, I do, and I’m not embarrassed about it, but I was just wondering how you knew first of all, and why you’d ask me in the most awkward way possible.”

“Well, because I’m awkward. As far as how I knew, I saw you saying goodnight to Talia Smith before work last week. You didn’t exactly hide it,” Mike said, turning red, and neglecting to tell her the vision was something that didn’t quite escape his mind. He loved El, but that didn’t stop seeing two beautiful women together from being the vision that it was.

“Nosy much?” Robin asked. 

“Sorry,” Mike continued. “But…anyway, more importantly…I wanted to ask you about it, you know, if you don’t mind, because I think…I SUSPECT…my friend is dealing with some…trouble. In…coming out.” Robin looked at him, intrigued, and then leaned over.

“Well, first of all, you’re a very good friend for coming here and asking me, because most people are either judgmental and weird about it or say it’s not their problem.” 

“Thanks, I guess,” Mike told her. “I just…how can I help? What can I do so this friend KNOWS that it’s okay and I’m not going to judge him for it?”

“Here’s a brilliant idea – tell him that,” Robin said, a mocking smile on her face. Mike shrugged.

“But…what if I’m wrong? What if I have it all mixed up and the vision…I mean, the idea that I had of him being interested in guys was a big mistake?”

“Well, then he’ll tell you that,” Robin told him a bit more sympathetically. “I mean, the worst-case scenario? He thought you were being a sensitive friend who misconstrued a situation. If he takes that as the deepest offense, then he’s probably sensitive about it for a reason which means you’re probably right and he’s probably not admitting it to himself. If he’s such a good friend, he shouldn’t judge you for telling him you’d never think less of him. In fact, he should respect that.” Mike nodded.

“That makes sense,” he said. Then, after a short hesitation, he continued. “What…I’m sorry if this is weird…what’s it LIKE? I’ve always kind of understood this friend and I want to do the best I can to get what he’s feeling, but I just…I know I can’t understand.”

Robin thought about it a minute; nobody ever asked her that question. She didn’t think much about it herself. She just sort of always…was. Whatever she was. But, still, the first realization was…

“It’s different,” Robin answered thoughtfully, and then looked to Mike, trying to find the words. “I mean…when I was say, 10, 11, and girls started saying guys were cute and stuff, I’d sort of smile and nod, but I just couldn’t agree. I just didn’t care about it like they did. And sometimes I could sort of see it, you know, like in an aesthetic way, because some men are good looking and all, and I’d play the game just because I didn’t know what else to do. So for a while I just felt…I don’t know, different. But I couldn’t pinpoint it. And then one day I found a girl I LIKED. Like one I actually liked, and I finally got what all those other girls were talking about when they went crazy over some guy crush they had. That part – that part where your heart beats a little faster seeing someone and it’s like a light switch has turned on…that part I’m sure you get.”

“Definitely,” Mike replied, thinking of the first instant he saw El. He remembered the way her face looked so little and terrified in the middle of that storm, of how her eyes glowed in the blinding beam of his flashlight, how she quickly nodded her head when he asked if she was cold and she gave him this soft look of disbelief and confusion when he immediately felt the urge to take off his jacket and give it to her. Nobody ever struck him like that before in his life. And for a moment he thought it was just the extremity of the situation. It was a girl lost in a storm in nothing but a T shirt. Of course, he was more sensitive to that. Of course, he wanted to give her his jacket. Wouldn’t anyone? But then months later, when Max came and he lost all sense of hospitality – didn’t want to be nice to her simply because she wasn’t El – he realized that, no, it wasn’t the extremity at all. It was El. He was taken by her in the moment he saw her.

“So…don’t pretend like you can EXACTLY relate to him. Just try to find a commonality so he doesn’t feel like a weirdo. Discuss your overall romantic feelings. They pretty much run parallel whether it’s a girl for a girl, a guy for a girl, a guy for a guy…just make sure he understands that his feelings AREN’T so different form yours, if you get what I’m saying.” Mike nodded. That sounded like great advice. It was a good way to start, in any case.

“Thanks, Robin. That helps a lot.” 

“Don’t mention it,” Robin told him. He started walking back to the stock room to catch up with Steve when Robin looked in their direction and tried to conceal a smile.

She SUSPECTED that whole man whore thing was a front…

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Come on, Hopper. Please come out.” Leslie stood outside the bathroom stall where she knew El had hidden for the entirety of study hall, in part because she was still too embarrassed to go to the library and too scared to go to the stairwell, and in part because half the school just saw her slap and curse at Paul Richards in the middle of the hallway. Knelt over in a stall, mortified, El had no desire to get out.

“You’re supposed to be in study hall,” El told her, her voice still shaking.

“They don’t take attendance anymore, which is why you’re here,” Leslie countered. “Come on, already. Why are YOU embarrassed, anyway? From what I’ve heard he deserved what he got. That’s what Sandra and Beth were saying in History, anyway.”

At that, El opened the door to let Leslie in with her. She gave her a hopeful look as she closed the door behind her, her eyes still pink from embarrassed tears.

“Really?”

“Yeah. They said he was a real jerk. Everybody is talking about it, El, and they’re not saying you were wrong! Every single person who was in that hallway knows that he was being an arrogant prick and nobody can believe it, because he’s usually not like that. And that’s my fault, not yours.”

“Your fault?” El asked, turning to Leslie who squatted down against the door to the stall with her. Leslie sighed deeply, feeling guilty.

“Paul came to my apartment looking for you…but he was really looking for Will. I called him on it, and he freaked out. Look…Hopper, I know that you’re learning a lot about the world because, like you said, that evil scientist dude experimented on you and the policeman kept you hidden, but…you know, sometimes boys like girls and others…”

“I know that Will likes boys,” El told her. Leslie sighed deeply, then turned to her.

“Did…you know he likes Paul?”

“No,” El said, sitting up straighter and looking at Leslie in interest. “He does? Are they…has he…”

“Nothing has happened because Paul obviously likes Will too but doesn’t want to admit it so he’s taking his anger out on YOU,” Leslie whispered, hoping that there was nobody else in the stall overhearing them. “Don’t tell Will that, though. He feels bad enough. He yelled at him at the football game, did he tell you that?”

“Only that he said…he wasn’t like him, but…” El stopped, and grabbed Leslie’s wrist, excited. 

“LESLIE!”

“What?” Leslie asked, and El turned to her smiling.

“Mike’s sister…remember Will and I told you she could see things and that’s why we left?”

“Yeah. So?”

“She saw Will kissing a BOY. A handsome boy. With dark hair!” Leslie raised her eyebrows suspiciously.

“Doubt it’s him after all this. He’s being a jerk.”

“But…maybe he’ll apologize.”

“I think what he did to you in the hallway requires more than an apology. More like a personality transplant,” Leslie told her, placing an arm around her. El smiled, and leaned her head on Leslie’s shoulder.

“You remind me of my friend Max,” El told her, thinking about the time that she had a sleepover with Max for two days and got to enjoy a new friendship for the first time in her life. Leslie did have a lot of Max’s personality. The two of them would probably be good friends if they ever met.

“I remind you of a guy? Great.”

“No, no, Max. It’s short for Maxine. She just calls herself Max, though. She’s…she’s strong like you and sticks up for herself.”

“Sounds like my kind of girl,” Leslie said. “No wonder you and her are friends. You’re strong too. And you’re just so…real. That’s why I like you, Hopper. That’s why you make phony bullshit artists like Paul Richards freak out. The scariest thing in a high school like this is to dare to be yourself and have other people see it. But you…you don’t care about any of that. It’s enough to drive someone like him crazy.” There was a moment of peaceful silence, and then El turned to Leslie.

“Paul is an artist?” Leslie cracked up, squeezing her arm tighter around El’s shoulder.

“Hopper…you are SUCH a trip.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Lucas! Lucas, if Neil comes home he’s going to freak out!” Max was interrupted by Lucas’s mouth softly brushing against hers. They had just gotten back from her skateboarding (and his lame attempt at skateboarding) at the park and, as was so often the case after a day of fun, just the two of them, they could hardly control themselves and proceeded to make out with fervor in her bedroom before her mom and Neil got back from work. Laying side by side on her bed, a little laugh escaped his mouth.

“He’s not home now, is he?” Lucas said, wrapping an arm around her more tightly and kissing her again. She forced herself to separate from him, as little as she actually wanted to.

“It’s 4:40 and he’s due to get home at 5:00.”

“So that gives us twenty minutes of this,” Lucas whispered, brushing his hand against her face. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is,” Max started in between kisses. “It’s twenty minutes technically but he drives home the same way that you go home and you’re a ten-minute bike ride away, so he’ll know you were here and then I’ll have to hear it.”

“Ten minutes then,” Lucas continued. She giggled along his mouth as they continued kissing, and cursed herself for doing this every single time. Neil had caught Lucas leaving the house plenty of times. He already didn’t believe that it was just a little making out and that was all, and having to endure being called a stupid whore was something that made her want to explode, particularly since it couldn’t be further from the truth. Whether or not she was doing what accused her of, however, that wasn’t his whole gripe. She was home and had chores and productive things to do; she shouldn’t be entertaining that no good…well, she didn’t want to repeat the awful words she used to describe Lucas, which infuriated her beyond anything. It was ridiculous. The moment Max turned 18 she would get out of this house and move far away, where she and Lucas could do this as often as she liked.

“Hey,” came Lucas’s voice, leaning back. That was unlike him. Lucas wasn’t usually one to interrupt their time alone. “What’s wrong? What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” Max said. “It just…sucks. I just want to be here with you and have fun and then I think of him and it just…it ruins it and it makes me nervous.”

“Just put it out of your mind,” Lucas told her, rubbing her face. “Think about me and the intoxicating power of my kisses.”

“You’re a dork,” Max laughed, giving him a light push. “Why am I dating you?”

“Because you’re CRAZY about me,” Lucas teased back, leaning in to kiss her again. 

“You’re okay,” Max joked, leaning in to kiss him back. And for a moment, in their usual silly banter, she was able to put Neil out of her mind and fully embrace their time together. Their arms around each other tightly, they exchanged sweet, fleeting kisses until a loud knock made them both jump.

“What the hell?” Lucas asked. “You expecting anyone, Max?”

“Yeah, my other boyfriend,” Max joked. “Why do you think I was hurrying you out of here?”

“Cool. As long as we have an open relationship, I was thinking of asking…”

“Do NOT finish that sentence,” Max warned, and got up to get the door. “It’s probably just one of Neil’s packages. He sends away for stuff he sees on home shopping network sometimes.” She went over to the door where the knocking was loud and urgent; it certainly didn’t seem like a delivery person.

She opened the door to see a little blond girl with pigtails looking sadly at her.

“Holly?” Max asked. At that, Lucas came running over to the door.

“What’s Mike’s little sister doing here?” he asked Max.

“Holly, does your mom know you’re here?” Max asked, kneeling down and facing Holly directly. Holly, tears in her eyes, shook her head.

“Please don’t tell her, Max,” Holly cried. “Don’t tell her I’m here. Don’t tell anyone just…let me stay with you. Please.” Holly jumped into Max’s arms and Max exchanged a frightened look with Lucas. There was no way they could just keep her there, but she was in no condition to go home.

“What happened?” Max asked, and Lucas knelt down with them so that he wasn’t hovering.

“Mommy and Daddy hate each other,” Holly said. “They always yell. I just…I don’t like it. It makes me sad. And Mikey is at work so I couldn’t even go with him.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Holly,” Max told her, looking at her softly. “That’s really hard. And…you know, I get it. My mommy and her husband…they fight, too.”

“Isn’t that your daddy?” Holly asked, confused and wiping a tear from her face. Max sighed.

“Not my real daddy,” Max told her. “Families…they get messy sometimes. Because people get mad at each other and that happens. But…they love you. They all love you, Holly. Them getting mad at each other has nothing to do with you. It doesn’t mean they hate each other, either. It just means…it’s probably a fight. And they’ll forgive each other and get over it.”

“Tell you what,” Lucas said, rubbing her gently on her arm. “I’m actually going to be going home soon anyway, but I’m right near you, so I can take you home with me. You want to ride on my bike with me? You’ll just sit behind me and hold on to my waist. It’ll be fun!” 

“Yeah,” Max said. “And...maybe Lucas can stay for a little. Or he can get his sister to come and play with you too.”

“Sure,” Lucas agreed, exchanging a smile with Max. It was rare the two of them were on the same page, and something about it felt really good. 

“Y-you’d play with ME?” Holly asked. “You never want to play. Only with Mike.”

“Are you kidding?” Lucas asked, smiling at her wide. “You’re SO much cooler than Mike, Holly! Don’t tell him I said that, though!” Wiping her face, Holly gave him a little giggle and nodded her head.

“Okay.”

“Great,” Lucas said. “Come on, Holly. I’ll show you how we do it.” Max joined the two of them by Lucas’s bike, helping Holly to get on behind him and hold on tight. Something about seeing Lucas become so sweet and soft around Mike’s little sister made her heart melt in a way that somehow made her want to make out with him even more, which really sucked considering even kissing him goodbye would probably make Holly feel weird.

“Why were you at Max’s house?” Holly asked, as if reading her mind. “Are you guys boyfriend girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” Lucas said. “I’m lucky, right? Isn’t Max pretty?” Max’s face flushed red. Lucas didn’t dispense compliments that often and she couldn’t remember the last time he came right out and said that she was pretty. 

“Yeah. I like her hair,” Holly agreed. 

“That’s my favorite. That and her smile,” Lucas said, turning to Max and winking, which practically turned her to goo. “Well, we’d better be going. Say bye to Max!”

“Bye, Max!” Holly said. 

“Bye Holly,” Max brightly replied. “Bye, Lucas.”

“Later, Madmax!” Lucas said, and, as he rode off and grew smaller and smaller, Max, for a rare moment in her life, watched him go and wondered how the hell she got so lucky.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

El knocked on Will’s bedroom door that night, feeling bad that the two of them really hadn’t gotten to talking since the weekend. He seemed a little better today than he was the last two days, but, still, she hadn’t been the best friend to him. Or sister. Whatever she was.

“Can I come in?” El asked. Will nodded, and El sat alongside him on the bed, where he was lying and sketching in a book. She peeked over at his drawing and it was someone crying. The teardrop was so realistic it looked like it could be a photograph, not a drawing.

“Wow,” El said, admiring it.

“What?” 

“It’s beautiful,” El told him. He gave her a humble smile, truly grateful.

“Thanks,” he replied. There was a bit of silence as he continued with it. She looked across the room at the second bed that was waiting for Jonathan when he got back from college, which would be tomorrow. Knowing that he, Mike and Nancy would be there and that they’d all be together like a little family gave her some peace in the midst of all the discomfort she felt in the last few days.

“Listen,” El started. “I’m sorry…if Paul was mean to you.”

“Yeah,” Will quietly said, putting his pencil down and looking at her. “I’m sorry he was mean to you, too. I heard what happened today. That sucks.”

“Well…I wanted to ask you,” El quietly cut in. “Do you…like Paul? Like I like Mike?” There was some hesitation and Will looked down, not sure how to answer. Then he looked at her sweet eyes, free of judgment and full of nothing but concern for him, and felt safe nodding.

“Yeah, I do,” Will answered. 

“Oh,” El simply responded, not sure of the right way to react to something like this. Again, there wasn’t judgment in her voice. El wasn’t in the world enough to form judgments like that. 

“Don’t…please don’t tell anyone. Mike or anything.” A lump formed in El’s throat, and she, an awful liar ordinarily, turned away. Will, of course, noticed. “El? Does Mike…know?”

“He…has an idea,” El told him. She certainly didn’t want to embarrass him by telling him Holly’s visions of Will kissing who was most likely Paul. Will, however, pressed for more.

“How does he know that?”

“He doesn’t know about Paul,” El honestly told him. “He just knows…or, well, he thinks…that you like boys instead of girls.”

Will felt his heart beating. How long had Mike known? Was it that obvious? Did all the boys know?

“Is…is he weird about it?”

“No,” El said solidly and firmly. “No, not at all, Will. Mike loves you. Loves you for who you are. He told me that sometimes boys love boys and sometimes boys love girls and that’s okay.”

Those words filled Will with comfort that he couldn’t even begin to describe. To know that Mike – Mike who just wrote him a long letter explaining himself first and who didn’t want Will to hate him and who made time to radio him every single week to see how he was doing – knew that about him and it didn’t change anything. His greatest fears relieved, a smile broke on his face.

“Oh, my God, you have no idea how relieved I am,” Will told her. “I thought…I mean, his dad is so conservative, I was SURE he’d think it was weird.”

“We’re all weird,” El told Will, giggling a bit. “Why should this be any different?” He smiled back, and it felt good for the two of them to be able to make light of everything. And she stayed in his room, watched him draw, and the two chatted away, concealed in the comfort of their space and the freedom to be who they were. 

______________________________________________________________________________

“The girl and the boy took a bus back to Greenville, Illinois,” Officer Banks handed photographs that he had taken as he traveled to Hawkins and Chicago to Brenner, who looked pleased. After interfering with their radio signal, his team had discovered that Michael Wheeler had left town to see Eleven The bus company recalled seeing a boy of his description take a bus to Greenville, and another to Chicago. More recently, a team of Banks’s scouted the school and located both Eleven and Will.

“So we know where they are. That’s a start. However, with their parents both guarded, the question will be how to get her on her own without anyone seeing.”

“There has been one suggestion,” Officer Banks went on. “As it turns out, Eleven is being tutored by a young man. There is some sort of…romantic conflict between himself and the Byers boy.”

“Banks, this is our plan to get ahead in the scientific race with the Russians, not an episode of some soap opera. The sexual orientation of a high school sophomore is of very little interest to me.”

“Pity,” Banks continued. “Because, see, this boy is a football star…if anyone found out, well, he’d be destroyed. It’s just too bad that he took too many pills and had to be rushed to the hospital on Thanksgiving…”

Brenner stopped what he was doing and turned to him. He raised his eyebrows. This was a bit much, even for them, but he was wondering where he would go with it.

“The evening before Thanksgiving, all of the meathead teenagers in Illinois go to a huge party under the bleachers behind the football field. Most don’t remember it, because it is your typical smorgasbord of drugs and alcohol. Therefore, if this Mr. Paul Richards were to…wander off somehow…and we injected him with enough to impact his system, but not kill him…then left a bottle of bills with the same chemical substance right alongside him…”

“Do you think that Eleven will want to go see this boy?”

“Certainly,” Officer Banks continued. “She had some sort of argument with him in the last two days. You tell me your Eleven has had moments of…weakness? Pity for people?”

“Her mother’s daughter,” Brenner bitterly muttered, his heart racing at the thought that this idea could work.

“And the Wheeler boy…he’ll of course be jealous that she wants to see a boy who isn’t him, so he won’t go with her. A hospital…a busy place like that…it would be so unfortunate if she entered into the wrong room, we gave her an injection, and we took her to you, wouldn’t it?”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was an urgent knock on the door.

The resident of the house – a sturdy, strong woman in her early 40s – was cautious about answering. She had been cautious about answering for the last 15 years.

She tried to repress what she had been seeing lately. She knew it had to be Terry’s daughter again. She continued to have visions of her after years and years, but so many unusual things entered her stream of consciousness when there were extra electrical charges in the air – thunderstorms and excessive rain – that she didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.

Terry’s daughter didn’t look like Terry. Not entirely. She looked like Andrew. She had his big eyes and Terry’s soft features. There was no mistaking her. 

She had seen Terry’s daughter – called Eleven, the number tattooed to her arm, and not always Jane, the name Terry wanted for her - since before she was born, but the visions got clearer. Scarier. She saw her with that flower like creature she remembered seeing so many years ago with Terry, Gloria and Ken in the lab. But then there were other visions An enormous shadow. A big, indistinguishable, building sized, gelatinous thing. What was real? What wasn’t? It was hard to say. Plus, at this point, what could she do about it?

Then she saw new visions recently; far more comforting sights. Visions of her as Jane in school, with friends, with a boy who looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The image of her happy softened her, after she had spent forever tracking the things she’d been doing. Those visions that Brenner started all those years ago never quite ended.

Neither did her memory of the person standing before her.

He was an intern when she was assisting in the lab; he would just start setting up machines. But he helped. He was in some of her visions of Terry’s daughter. He was hurting her.

He looked a mess. There was terror in his eyes. He stood bearded, disheveled, his clothes dirty and frazzled. 

She opened the door, eyeing him suspiciously.

“A-Alice Johnson?” he asked. She didn’t answer; just continued to stare at him. Nobody called her that anymore. Nobody COULD; not since she escaped. “Wow, you…you haven’t changed…”

“I remember you, Seamus. If you came looking to bring me back to that torture chamber you’re working in, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Alice told him. “I heard the official lab shut down and I have a sense for where the new one is, so if you try anything, I can go straight to the press and…”

“I need your help,” he told her. “There’s a girl…she was there when you were there…Kali…”

Kali.

Yes.

Terry’s little friend. Alice spoke to her, too. She must not be a girl anymore; she must certainly be a young woman at this point.

“What about her?”

“She tried to kill me,” he whispered. “Thought she did, but I’ve…I’ve done research. I know that people who worked in that lab have been victimized before. I had myself vested, she had no idea. B-because, what she doesn’t know is…I have nothing to do with that lab anymore beyond faking my loyalty to them to get whatever information I can and…they have to be stopped. They have to be stopped Alice, because what they’re trying to do can completely screw with our ENTIRE planet, and I just…I didn’t know who else to go to. And now that I know my life is on the line and I’m the only one with this information, I have to try to do something about it.”

Alice raised her eyebrows at him and opened the door further. He walked in and took a seat on her messy couch, covered with boxes of parts from the repair shop she now took over.

Shaking and trembling, he barely met her eyes when they continued.

“So you’re telling me that you’re now using this information to try to STOP the lab, and Dr. Brenner has no idea you’re doing this?”

“He can’t,” the man continued. “If he knew…if he had any idea, he’d kill me. And if I went to any real authority figure, anybody who isn’t completely concealed and under an alias, he would know. You’re listed as a totally different name but I KNOW who you are. I did research the last several years and I figured it had to be you. You’re the only one from those days left; the only one who’s still together enough and knows enough about it to help me. Plus, from what I remember…from what I recall…you had visions. Visions of…of the girl. The special one. Eleven.”

“I’m not involving Terry’s daughter in this any more than you people already have,” Alice cut in. “You raised that girl like a common animal and she’s finally in a place where she’s normal.”

“You don’t understand,” Seamus continued. “You don’t understand…what she’s actually done…without knowing she’s done it. She has to be the one to stop it. If she doesn’t…”

“Stop what?”

“Have you heard of String Theory?” Seamus asked, and Alice chuckled in response. 

“I’m a mechanic, not a physicist.”

“It’s a theory that postulates that, when the Big Bang happened, our universe split…into several parallel universes. That much energy, that rip in the time space continuum, split what should have been one of, say, me, into a me here, a me in another universe, and a me in even another one.”

Alice stared at him like there actually were three heads on his face.

“So…there are five of me out there? That doesn’t sound feasible.”

“Theoretically…but, they may not LOOK like you. They may not look entirely…HUMAN. That entity…that entity of who you are, your biological makeup, your entire essence, it may come in different…forms…and the connection from one universe to another is a black hole. A black hole that sucks the energy out of one universe, and brings it into another.”

“So you’re saying…”

“You’ve seen that monster? The monster with the flower head?”

“Yes. Are you saying…”

“Eleven was the first to expose us to him. To expose us to a parallel being from another universe. She was placed in a highly charged water tank and asked to enter into a world far away. Her fear combined with all of that highly charged electromagnetism created a force so strong and powerful that it opened the portal to this black hole. A black hole leading us to one very frightening world of our parallel selves. And that person she interacted with in it…that is the parallel form of the only other person with whom Eleven had interacted in her whole life.”

Alice sat there, in complete bewilderment. She could hardly believe that this man was trying to convince her of what he was.

“So…you’re saying that this monster thing…that THIS…was the parallel form of Dr. Brenner?”

“Yes,” Seamus continued.

“Well, how the hell do you know that?” Alice asked, getting up. “That sounds like wild speculation to me…”

“It’s science,” Seamus continued. “I studied Dr. Brenner’s wounds when this thing attacked him. And this thing attacked, but couldn’t kill him. It couldn’t kill him because it IS him. Beings from alternate universes can’t kill their own source of energy. They arose out of the same being. They are one another’s parallel form. I secretly got samples of its DNA, taken off of stains on my lab coat, and, despite being a monster that is absolutely nothing like us, it has strands of DNA that perfectly match those of Dr. Brenner. From a strictly medical standpoint, they are the same being.”

Alice paced a little more. This was a lot to take in; a lot to process.

“So…wait, if that’s Brenner, then what’s Eleven?”

“The other Monster. The Brain in that world. Its sole mission is to destroy that energy that hurt it. I was one of the scientists secretly chosen to study the victims left in the wreckage after the fourth of July. That Hargrove boy – his DNA was combined with another. And that perfectly matched that of Eleven, who I have had to do repeated lab tests on since she was born. It was her match. This monster…it was her parallel form.”

“But..that doesn’t make sense,” Alice said. “I’ve seen visions…this thing went after Eleven…”

“And the monster went after Dr. Brenner. These parallel forms, they don’t act like humans. They don’t think like humans. This universe, it isn’t composed of rational, thinking beings. They are just firm on animalistic instinct. The Brenner form – he went after youth. He went after innocence and people who are special. That Byers boy. He is now rumored to be interested in a young sister of Michael Wheeler, the boy who kept Eleven hidden. Anyone who does not fit his agenda is just disposed of. That’s precisely the energy, the will, the intent of Dr. Brenner, only in a more barbaric form. This shadow monster – this thing that he corrupted, that he turned into a killer – it is Eleven’s parallel, but it is not like Eleven. It has learned to kill and be ruthless but it does not possess the humanlike quality necessary to channel that. It also sees Eleven, and it doesn’t reason that she and it are the same entity, the same being. It just believes that this unusual, foreign creature has failed to destroy the energy that comes from Brenner and has closed the gate, rendering her mission to kill the human form of him and all the people who support him futile. The alternate form of Brenner is destroyed, but, with a portal to our worlds connected, the mission is not complete; she still feels his energy and she needs it stopped. Vengeance has not been reached. And now, now with the body of the shadow monster weakened through the destruction of its Earthly form last Fourth of July, only its energy remains and it can be weakened if its human parallel carries out its will. She…she has to do it. Eleven has to kill Brenner for the brain of this other world to retreat from our world and feel satisfied in her mission, sealing the connection between our worlds for good. If not, the gate will remain open until that happens.”

“So…you’re saying that this gate opening…it made this world attuned to our world’s energies, and…this shadow thing…El’s parallel…does not want to leave our world until she sees the real Brenner – the human Brenner – dead. At the hands of Eleven, who is an extension of her own energy.”

“Yes,” Seamus continued. She paced some more, thinking. There were so many questions.

“What about the dogs?”

“They were just her army. What an insult to the genius who created her – she made dog like forms of him? She sent those dogs out to hunt everyone in the lab; everyone who helped him to thrive and continue to hurt her. But there’s another problem. This world – it’s energy and magnetic field merging with ours – it can mess everything up. It can change our entire species. The creature got into Eleven and changed her. When people meet their parallel forms, it creates an unnatural sense of disequilibrium. It throws the body into confusion; from what I’ve heard through my limited contact with colleagues at the lab who still ask my advice on how to proceed with this, Eleven lost her powers and is now in the act of retraining them. She’s a strong person, though. If other forms of this world come out into ours – if others meet this monstrous, parallel version of themselves, it could completely destroy them. Physically, mentally, emotionally. It could endanger the entire human race. We have to get to Eleven before he does and we have to get her to kill him.”

“Get to…she doesn’t even know who I am!” Alice shouted. “She’s going to trust me – some stranger – with no understanding of physics, telling her that the fate of the universe rests on her killing a man who she’s absolutely terrified of?”

“She knows her mother,” He stressed. “I’ve…I’ve done extensive research, traveled to Hawkins, ransacked the old cabin where she used to live. She had a bus ticket. A ticket hidden in a drawer from a trip to exactly where her mother lives.”

“Terry is a vegetable,” Alice said angrily, not wishing to discuss this. “If you would have done this hard core investigative work earlier instead of abusing little kids, you could have saved her.”

“I was wrong. I know that,” Seamus said. “But I think that putting my life on the line to save hers and everyone else’s kind of makes up for that.” Alice sat alongside him, unsure of her options.

“So what do I have to do?”

“Contact Terry’s sister. Say that you want to speak to Terry and you want to send a message to Jane. She won’t answer you. She can’t talk. But…I think she can still reach Jane. I think it’s something she’s still capable of. And if she can, you can talk to her. You can tell her what she has to do. Meanwhile, there is a trail leading Brenner right to her. We may not be quick enough to get to her before he does, but her mind is what it is and we can still reach her. I strongly suggest that you and I appeal to the Wheeler boy.”

“I’m going to just march over to a teenage boy and tell him I know his girlfriend’s mother?” Alice retorted. “That’s not creepy.”

“He loves her; he'll do anything he can to help her,” Seamus asserted. “Again…I’ve done my research, I know. I’ve tapped into way too many of their gooey conversations…”

“They’re children. This is getting weird,” Alice grumbled.

“For information! I didn’t sit there with popcorn and listen for fun!” Seamus exclaimed. 

“Fine. Just…let’s sit and draw this out. If this does anything to result in Brenner finally getting what he deserves, count me in.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the point where things start to get VERY dark. You may not like me after this one. Sorry. "I need you to trust me", though. :)

_11-28-86_

_Dear Mike,_

_I no that you are probabley going to be mad at me, so I thot I would write you a letter and leave it for you before I go to the hospitel to see Paul._

_You are rite. Paul was meen and does not desirve me to be nice to him. But the thing is that we have all been meen when we are angry, and I think that Paul is relly angry because he wants to be allowd to love who ever he wants and he cant and I can and that is not fare. So he got mad at me and sed meen things he did not meen. He was not thinking. That is why he took all that medisin and tried to hurt himself._

_It kind of hurte my feelings that you yelld at me about this on Thanksgiving when I have been so exited to see you. I know that you were happy to see me and it was Thanksgiving but I sometimes feel like you think I am stupid. I know you are going to say that you dont, and you may not think that you do, but sometimes, when you tell me that what I am doing is rong, I feel stupid. You told me that I shood always tell you if you make me feel bad. You made me feel bad, Mike. I still love you. I always love you. But I relly wish you wood stop yelling. You sed you don’t like when your mom and dad do it. You shood not do the same thing._

_I hope you are not mad at me. But Hop left and for a wile I thote he was dead, and that I did not tell him how I felt about things, so I promist myself that I wood always tell you how I feel. I love you best. I always will. But I will also have other frends I care about and I dont want that to make you mad._

_You do not have to rite me back. We can tak about it if you want. Just pleese do not be mad that I wanted to see how Paul was. It dose not meen I dont love you._

_Love,_

_El_  
_____________________

The writing of El’s letter smudged as Mike’s tears dropped all over the ink displaying her words. The others would want to know she left him a note, but there was nothing in there that could give any clues about where she was.

She was gone.

She was gone and he promised her he wouldn’t let this happen. She was gone and he was sure that he knew where she was; that the worst had happened, and that Brenner had taken her as he so often feared he would. She was gone, and the last thing he did was yell at her. Was fight with her. When they never fought, and he loved her so much that her absence filled him with fear and hurt in in a way that was paralyzing and all-consuming.

He closed his eyes, wishing this was a bad dream. Wishing he could go back to Wednesday night.

_____________________________________________________

11/27/86

Mike couldn’t wait to get to Illinois

His bus arrived late; at around 10:45 PM. Nancy and Jonathan met him at the bus station since they were passing it anyway on their way to celebrate Thanksgiving with the Byers as well. They exchanged hugs and pleasantries. He felt funny saying it sometimes, but he really missed his sister, as much as, a year ago, he was grumbling that she couldn’t wait for her to get out of the house and stop driving him crazy.

He sat in the back seat and watched as she and Jonathan held hands and did all the sweet, romantic things that he couldn’t wait to do with El. Jonathan stopped his radio station search when he heard a song he knew Nancy liked, even if he hated it. Nancy would periodically reach her non-driving hand and hold his. At stop signs they’d talk and exchange soft glances.

Granted, they saw each other more than he saw El. Still, they weren’t always together. Nancy was studying journalism at the University of Chicago. Jonathan was in a state college on student loans and working part time at a local photographer’s studio. The two lived in the same city about 20 minutes away, and spent weekends sneaking into one another’s dorm for the weekend. But they still couldn’t get enough of each other. Even weekdays away from each other were enough to make them look completely thirsty to see each other again, especially for a holiday.

Over the phone, Nancy told Mike once that she was so proud he and El made it work; that he wrote her and called her, that they knew so deeply what was going on in one another’s lives. It made Mike feel proud too; he very rarely got such open praise from his sister, and to follow in her example and be in a healthy relationship felt good.

They arrived at the Byers apartment at 11:30. Joyce, Will and El were all in the living room, barely containing their excitement at seeing everyone. Joyce gave Jonathan such a big hug that Mike was sure she may never let him go, but he didn’t see it for too long, because El ran to him, wrapping her arms around him. The two didn’t want to kiss the way they had last time in front of everyone, but they settled for leaning in, giving each other a sweet peck, holding each other closely and soaking in the moment.

They all sat down and had some coffee and snacks, talking about the drive, college, life in general. Mike couldn’t even remember where the conversation went, but he did remember, sitting in this living room, holding hands with El and sitting alongside his best friend Will, laughing with his sister and Mrs. Byers and Jonathan – he felt happier than he felt in a really long time. These weren’t just his friends. This was his FAMILY. He would keep turning to El, seeing that beautiful, happy smile on her face, and his mind would drift back to that fantasy of living his life next to her like this.

A little after midnight they all turned in to sleep. Mrs. Byers asked Will and Mike to stay in the living room so Nancy could stay with Jonathan. Mike couldn’t help but feel that was unfair, as he would give anything to be able to lie next to El and fall asleep like they had the weekend before, but he understood. His sister and Jonathan were adults who spent every weekend together and it made sense that Mrs. Byers would let them stay together. 

As Mike and Will lay down and everyone else went to sleep, Mike thought it would be a good chance to have that talk with Will he had practiced for the last couple of days.

“So…did you get my note?” Mike asked, not knowing how to begin. Will nodded.

“Yeah. Did you really think I would hate you, Mike? I mean…I get it. I’m almost kind of glad. El’s been practicing every day and she’s getting really good at getting the control of her powers back.”

“Good,” Mike told him. “And, no, I mean, I didn’t think you’d hate me. I just thought you might be mad. I’ve been…distant.”

“You live thousands of miles away,” Will told him with a smile. “You are distant.”

“Well, you know what I mean,” Mike said. He wished he would have the courage to just come out and say what he wanted to say. Thankfully, though, Will continued.

“You’ve been awesome, Mike,” Will told him. “I mean…you live that far and you write letters and you call on the radio. You give me time after talking to El every week. You try harder than my dad ever did, that’s for sure. I could never hate you.”

“I…could never hate you, either,” Mike told him. “So…you know, if there was anything you…I don’t know, wanted to tell me about…yourself…”

“El told me you know,” Will interrupted. Mike sighed, relieved. He never told El NOT to say anything, so it’s not as though she betrayed his trust. Still, he was curious.

“When?” 

“After everything happened this week. With…Paul. I kind of…I’ve kind of felt…a certain way about him.”

Ohhh…

Wait a minute.

Mike thought back to what Robin said. If someone is cold, if someone resists hearing that they may be what they are, it could be that they are repressed and resentful and trying to hide it.

Paul…

He was never into El at all.

She was just a cover. A convenient cover because he liked WILL. Only he wouldn’t admit that. He’d rather tell Will that he’s nothing like him.

(And yell at El and call her weird in front of a hallway of students, which made Mike want to punch him the way he punched Tony, but, hearing this, he understood it a little. It was still wrong, but he understood.)

“Well…what did El say?”

“Just that you said that sometimes boys like girls and others they like boys and it’s okay.” 

“Yeah…it’s true,” Mike said, glad that these words came from El and he didn’t have to produce them without knowing Will already heard them. “I mean…I just feel, I don’t know, bad. I wish you told me. I hope you didn’t think I’d judge you for it.” Will shrugged, looking down.

“I…I don’t know. I just really figured it out. Leslie guessed it about me and…well, I couldn’t argue. It’s just…people get weird about stuff like that. I just didn’t want to make things weird.” Mike laughed a little, and Will looked up, alarmed. “What?”

“In the past three years, you’ve been trapped in the Upside Down, possessed by the Shadow Monster, we found El, who can move things with her mind, we’ve fought demodogs and monsters, and…you didn’t want to make things weird?” Will had to laugh too. The two of them had been through so much together, when Mike phrased it that way, it didn’t seem so bad.

“Yeah, it’s been crazy,” Will agreed. “So…I guess maybe I should tell the others. Do they know?” Mike shrugged. He didn’t think anyone would have any objection, but it wasn’t up to him.

“That’s up to you, Will. I mean…whatever you’re comfortable with. Everyone’s going to be fine with it no matter what. We’re friends. All of us. No matter what.”

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Paul felt like he was existing outside his body. He had so much beer at the annual football Thanksgiving Eve kegger that he felt light headed and off. He didn’t know how he got to this point, but he had some blond cheerleader in front of him, and was kissing her with fervor. It was easy to pretend to be into it while he was completely drunk. To pretend that he was really enjoying it.

All he could focus on, though, was how the world was moving; spinning.

She leaned back, looking at him in concern.

“What’s with you, Richards? You have a little too much there?”

“Not at ALL. I’m…I’m FINE!” Paul exclaimed, holding her clumsily and looking at her as though he wasn’t wishing she were someone else. “Let’s just…keep going…”

“I…don’t think so,” the girl said, backing off. “You look like you’re not even going to remember this tomorrow, and I deserve to be remembered.”

“How can I forget you?” Paul asked, placing a finger gently through her platinum hair. 

“What’s my name, Richards?” 

He froze.

Carly?

Lydia?

Sarah?

Jean?

Danielle?

Yes! Danielle!

“Danielle,” he clumsily said.

“WHAT?” the girl asked. Okay, obviously wrong. He was laughing.

“Come on, you know I’m joking. Obviously, I know your NAME.”

“Then say it,” she challenged, her hands on her hips. Okay, not Danielle. Maybe something with a similar ending name.

“Annabelle? Rochele?”

“KIMBERLY!” She shouted, giving him a shove. He fell over and she stomped away.

Great.

His reputation was already tarnished by the fact that everyone saw him insult Jane in front of the whole school. Jane wasn’t popular, but she was little, quiet, and cute. That was enough for the entire female population of the school to instantly take her side when a big, arrogant prick on the football team verbally abused her in front of everyone. The football players defended him relentlessly, telling him it was about time he defended himself. But he couldn’t feel good about it. Jane refused to speak to him, and it hurt. He missed her terribly. He missed her innocence, her sweet smile, her kindness, her real and comforting nature. 

He missed having an excuse to ask about Will.

He couldn’t stop thinking about him, how he looked at the water fountain, how pretending that he hated him because admitting that he really just wanted to hold him would cost him everything. His heart shattered into a million pieces again every time it happened.

The floor was wet beneath him. He knew he was covered in mud and getting up would only make him look like a bigger asshole than everything else did. So he lay there, hoping to be totally ignored. He would just stay there. Maybe fall asleep. His eyes drearily closed.

Until he felt a pinch in his arm. One that stung so terribly that he felt his entire arm burn.

“SHIT!” He shouted, and turned to the source of the sting.

A needle.

Some hooded, masked figure in black was injecting him in the arm. 

What the hell?

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, but the figure threw something on the ground in front of him and ran off. “WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?” he ran again, but, whatever was in that injection caused the pain in his arm to spread. It had instant effects. He felt his entire head feel heavy, the spinning from the alcohol mixed with the drug that was just forced into his system. Suddenly he felt a surge of nausea and dizziness that made the entire world fade. He felt his body convulse and shake. 

“H-help!” he managed, terror encapsulating whatever consciousness he had left before darkness came over and knocked him out.

________________________________________________________________________

Mike awoke to the feel of a soft hand touching his hair.

His eyes slowly opened, expecting daylight to hit them, but they didn’t. It was still dark. Yet, the dim moonlight from outside brightened things well enough that he could see the illuminating gleam of it hitting El’s face. El, who positioned herself right alongside him and had her hand pressed gently to his face.

If it were anyone else on Earth, he may have shouted at them for waking him; for alarming him. He didn’t mind at all with her. 

“El,” he started. She reached over and gently kissed him, interrupting him from speaking any further. They had only kissed goodbye briefly last Sunday before he drove home. He hadn’t kissed her properly like this since Saturday night in the spare room of the Kali’s warehouse setup, and it felt like sheer heaven to feel her kissing him again. After a few moments of blissful kisses, she backed up.

“Hi,” she whispered. He smiled back, rubbing his hand along her cheek.

“Hi,” he replied. “You’re a brave one, aren’t you? Mrs. Byers may kill you if she sees you wandered in here.”

“She’s a deep sleeper; she won’t know,” El assured him, tracing lines to connect the freckles on his face as she looked deeply at him. “I just couldn’t wait. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Mike told her sleepily, then turned to the clock behind where El was lying. “Shit…it’s 4:00 in the morning, El.”

“Yeah,” El said, a smile stretched on her face. “And if we waited until the morning everyone would be up and I wouldn’t get to do this.” She leaned in again and kissed him, and he kissed her back, his arms around her tightly. As their kiss deepened, their hands frantically grasping at one another, Mike felt himself a laugh a little.

“I hate myself for saying this, but we should slow down,” Mike told her. “Will’s right there. What if he can hear us?”

“He’s fast asleep,” El told him, giving him a pouty look. “Nobody will wake up. It’s just kissing, anyway. Nancy was kissing Jonathan before.” A look of disgust crossed Mike’s face, as he cringed at the thought of whatever his sister was doing with Jonathan.

“I…don’t need to hear about it, El.”

“But it was loud. Like…the watermelon, like Kali said,” El continued, a mischievous smile on her face.

“El!” Mike said a little louder. “Nobody wants to hear this about their sister.” El giggled a little, reaching over and leaning her head into Mike’s chest and hugging him there, as she couldn’t conceal her amusement at being able to push his buttons. She was just learning the concept of banter and it was fun. She liked to play with Mike in that way. He gently kissed the top of her head and turned her face to look at him by gently lifting it up from her chin.

“Seriously, though, El, it’s a big day today. We’ve got to help Mrs. Byers get dinner ready and then get the table set and everything. I’d love to have you next to me but we should both get more sleep.” 

“Okay,” El said sadly, reaching to kiss him one last time. He gave her a soft peck on her lips and rubbed her back. 

“Thanks for surprising me. This is the best way to wake up at 4 AM,” Mike told her, smiling. She gave him one final kiss on his cheek and got up to go to her room.

“Thanks. I’ll see you in a few hours.” As he watched her walk out, longing for more than anything for her to stay and curl up in his sleeping bag with him, Mike grinned to himself, thinking about how nice it would be to have the two of them spend their second Thanksgiving together. All was right with the world.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

“Okay, El, try it again.” After they all helped Joyce get the turkey in the oven, Mike, El, Jonathan, Nancy and Will went over to El’s room to practice moving objects. As usual, she could move the small ones fairly effortlessly. It was larger items – chairs, her desk and so on, that took a little more concentration. This time, she was trying to lift a box full of old books that Jonathan had put together to bring back to campus with him. She lifted it in the air and moved it, but it was still fairly choppy. It also still took a few moments to get it going. 

El didn’t like to admit it, but the further away she was from Kali, from that vision of Mike that terrified her, the harder it was to be terrified of it in the same way. She would never be used to it, but, without it in front of her, it started to feel like a complete dream or hallucination. She had to remind herself that it was a possibility. That Mike COULD be hurt, and, if she wanted to help him, she had to keep training. 

She lifted it up, moved it across the room, and set it down with a thump. Then, she sat down on her bed, blood trickling out of her nose, slightly dizzy.

“Water, she needs water,” Will told Mike, who ran out of the room to get her some. He hurried back as quickly as he could, and she gulped it up, then wiped her nose and took a few solid breaths.

“Is there another way?” Nancy asked. “Another way of activating her powers without putting her through the task of seeing you like that?”

“Kali says there isn’t,” Mike answered. “I just feel like…there has to be something we’re missing. She didn’t start her powers knowing me. She learned just as well.”

“If it’s working, it’s what I’ll do,” El reassured them.

“It can’t be easy to see that,” Nancy said, placing her hand on El’s and looking at her sympathetically. “You’re a much stronger person than I am, El.”

El smiled, but she was unsure. She didn’t feel strong. She felt as though she kept draining herself to do the same basic things and that it wasn’t coming as quickly as she thought it would. 

“I think you should take a break,” Mike told her. “Come on, the parade is on anyway, guys, and we already missed the first few minutes.” They all followed Mike inside, and he held an arm around El to support her. As excited as she was to relax a little and watch the parade, a piece of her felt like she should still be practicing.

Something felt off. She couldn’t place it, she couldn’t be sure what it was, but something felt terribly wrong.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Max took a long walk down her block early that afternoon to escape a bit. It was much needed.

Holidays were never her favorite. Ever since her parents got divorced one had been more depressing than the next. However, with Billy gone, her dread for them had heightened to the point that even people wishing her a Happy Thanksgiving filled her body with complete anxiety. She couldn’t be in that house anymore.

The smell of her mother’s perfect turkey and the aroma of a full family dinner being prepared for distant relatives of Neil’s that she barely knew filled her with disgust. It was as if Billy was never even there. You would think that Neil would mourn his son; would feel loss during the holiday season with his only child taken away from him. No. Neil felt nothing; or, rather, he showed nothing. The day of the funeral, of course, he put on a show. Even shed a tear or two. And his fits of anger that were unwarranted and unprompted clearly illustrated that he missed his son and needed some kind of outlet. But he couldn’t do this in the normal way. He was Neil, and Neil was together. Focused. Strong. He made his holiday celebrations bigger and better, sometimes proposed a phony toast to Billy that would make some relatives that she knew despised him just years before shed crocodile tears and pour himself some wine to ease the tension. 

Her mother sat there. An ornament. A trophy. She was never even asked if she was okay with all of this; with preparing a meal for a house full of company. She was to do it. That was it.

Sometimes Max thought she felt so defensive about El because she reminded her so much of her mother. She followed orders. She did what she was told. El grew up that way and her mother was living it as an adult.

“Not me,” Max muttered to herself. That would never be her. Hopefully as an adult she and Lucas or whoever her husband was could just get some sliced turkey, make a few sandwiches, sit in pajamas all day and not deal with anyone. That would have been a perfect holiday.

She passed the Wheeler House, which was full of distant relatives. Mike had said that they saw the same family at Christmas, so his mom didn’t mind if they missed Thanksgiving, but Max thought it may be nice to have people that you actually enjoyed being around. People who asked you how your day was and wanted to hear the answer. People who told you how big and beautiful you grew in a way that was endearing and loving and not totally creepy.

Just as she was about to keep walking, she saw the figure of Holly run outside with another little girl; probably a cousin.

“MAX!” Holly shouted. Holly and the little girl ran over, with Mrs. Wheeler in the doorway.

“Girls, where are you going?” she asked, and then she saw Max in the street and waved. “Max, hi! Happy Thanksgiving!”

Ugh.

There it was again.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Max awkwardly replied. 

“Mommy, can Max come in and play with us? Please?” Holly asked.

“Who’s Max?” said the little brunette girl alongside her. “Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

“No!” Holly shouted. “Max, this is my cousin Ashley. She’s five years old.”

“Five and a half!” Ashley corrected, and Max giggled. Mrs. Wheeler gave Max a warm smile.

“Honey, you’re welcome to join us for a little if your family is not having dinner until later. We’d love to have you.” Something in Max’s heart warmed a little. There was such a sincerity to her, just like Lucas’s mom. It felt so good to be loved and appreciated in this way; to have neighbors treat you with more care and dignity than the members of your own family. Seeing as she was zero help in the kitchen and best out of her mom’s way, Max smiled.

“That would be great.”

__________________________________________________________

“Oh, my stomach,” Mike grumbled as he held onto his belly with one hand. The other hand held El’s tightly as the two decided to go for a walk to work off the full feeling in their stomachs after eating more than El had probably consumed since last Thanksgiving. El enjoyed each morsel, having grown up on a simple diet that barely sustained her. She wasn’t used to holidays spent eating entirely too much. “You feel okay?” Mike asked.

“Full,” El told him, her voice low and a little grumbly. Mike smirked a bit at her.

“You’re not used to eating like that, huh?”

“Joyce is very concerned about being healthy,” El told him. “Light meals. Lots of vegetables. Not all those mashed potatoes.”

“I think you had three helpings,” Mike laughed, squeezing her hand light heartedly. “I didn’t think you had an appetite like that.”

El shrugged. She usually didn’t, but it was weird. After she left the lab and the idea of eating as much as she wanted without restriction was offered to her, she did. If it were up to her and she was living with parents who weren’t strict about it, she would have sat on the couch like Hop and gained weight like he did. Before…

Her mind drifted off to Hopper again. They had one Thanksgiving together before he vanished. It was quiet, but nice. They didn’t have as much to eat as Joyce did. He taught her how to roast turkey legs and they made boxed stuffing and mashed potatoes. He didn’t make a lot. They sat at the table, just the two of them, and it was quiet. Sweet. Nice. Then they sat together and he showed her what football was. She thought it was confusing and kind of boring; she still didn’t know how Paul liked it so much. But sitting curled up on the couch and leaning into his big, soft frame was a comfort she missed.

“You okay?” Mike asked. El gave him a smile, touched that he always knew when she needed to talk.

“I just miss Hop,” she told him, and she felt his hand give hers a tighter squeeze.

“We’ll find him, El. I know we will.”

“I just…I wonder what he’s doing,” El said. “If he’s okay. If…” her speech was interrupted by a flash of sirens as they turned the corner. There were several police cars by a house down the block. She knew that house. She had been there before. It was Marcy’s house.

“Marcy,” she said. Mike looked confused.

“Marcy?” he asked. She gave him a frightened look.

“She…she had the party that she invited us to. I don’t know her but…she called the police for me. She reported Tony. She’s…she’s Paul’s friend.”

“Hm. After what Paul did to you and Will, that’s not saying much,” Mike grumbled, but she turned to him.

“I want to see if she’s okay.” Mike didn’t want to. He wanted nothing to do with Paul or anyone relating to him. But he promised El he would try to be kinder when he was mad. So, he nodded his head and they walked closer.

There was a police officer who was talking to Marcy, who looked tearful and afraid. Marcy caught sight of El in her peripheral vision, said something to the cop, and walked over to her.

El was a bit startled. 

“Do you know her?” Mike asked. El shook her head.

“Not really. We’ve never talked. But…she knows who I am, I think,” El said, and, in a moment, Marcy hurried over to them, her eyes pink and cheeks wet from tears.

“Y-you’re Jane, right?” Marcy asked. El nodded, looking at Mike uncomfortably and then back at Marcy. “W-who is this?” Marcy asked, looking at Mike suspiciously.

“My boyfriend Mike,” El said, equally defensively. “Why?”

“Something’s happened,” Marcy told El, wiping her face. “They found Paul…they…” she buried her head in her hands and cried, leaving El awkwardly watching alongside Mike. Her nurturing instincts took over, though, and El placed a hand on Marcy’s shoulder.

“What happened?” El asked. Marcy calmed herself, took a deep breath, and looked at El.

“Paul’s in the hospital. On s-suicide watch. They th-think he tried to kill himself last night.”

As El looked at Marcy blankly, another "cop" standing a few feet away made a mental note. He would not have to stop at El's house to ask questions now. He could take his van to the hospital and wait. 

___________________________________________________________________________________

Max had to admit that Holly was a lot more fun when they were exchanging secrets while eating chips in her room. Watching El and Ashley fight over who was going to be She-Ra in their game of He-Man wedding wasn’t exactly Max’s speed. Max said she’d play an evil monster out to destroy the wedding when it was time for that part, because that certainly seemed more relatable to her. However, since the girls couldn’t even get it together for the game to start, that wasn’t a concern.

“You can do a boy voice WAY better than I can,” Holly argued.

“What? I’m a girl. How can I do a boy voice?”

“Like this,” Max imitated, lowering her voice to try to make it sound more masculine. They both looked at her like she was crazy.

“You sound like a gorilla,” Ashley told her. She started laughing hysterically, and Max couldn’t help but laugh too, but she noticed that Holly wasn’t laughing. She was standing there, her expression vacant, her eyes faraway. Ashley turned to Holly in disgust. “Helloooo! Earth to Holly!”

“What?” Holly asked. Ashley rolled her eyes. 

“I’m definitely being She-Ra,” she insisted. “You’re not even AWAKE, Holly!” Holly still looked distracted, and gave Max a knowing look. This wasn’t something they could discuss with Ashley around, but she must have just had another vision.

Judging from the look on her face, it wasn’t a good one.

“Um, Holly, can you show me where the bathroom is again? I forgot,” Max told her.

“Upstairs,” Holly told her, absent mindedly.

“No, no, I think it would be better if you showed me,” Max said, and took Holly’s hand. 

“Hey, what about me?” Ashley asked, and Max turned around.

“Just practice being She-Ra. We’ll be right back!” Max called, and, when they were up the stairs, they dodged the Wheeler aunts, uncles, and cousins enjoying appetizers and drinks in the living room and kitchen and went to the hall right near the bathroom.

“What did you see?” Max asked, kneeling alongside Holly and looking her in the face.

“Jane. She’s…in a hospital. And a man…he stuck a needle in her.”

A hospital…

El was having Thanksgiving with the Byers. Max didn’t get any code red calls on her radio. There was no emergency, was there?

“Then what?” Max asked.

“They…they put her on a bed thingie with wheels, and they covered her with a blanket…and put her in a truck. Then…they brought her to the bad man. The man who’s going to hurt her.”

Max tried not to freak out, but, still, thought it would be a good idea to get to Cerebro and try to reach the Byers. There was an unlikely chance that El would be going to a hospital, but, if she could stop her, she would.

______________________________________________________________________________________

“Where are you going?” Mike asked El, as she hurried down the block and toward her apartment building. She didn’t say a word. After getting the hospital information from Marcy, she said she was going to get there right away.

“To the hospital. I have to tell Will; he might want to come,” El replied, not even looking back at him. Mike’s anger surged through him. This guy was awful to El. He was awful to Will. She was going to give up the little time they had together and go to see him in the hospital?

“You…you can’t be serious,” Mike told her. “Did you forget what he did to you El? What he said about you? He said you were beneath him. He insulted your intelligence. He made you cry. He’s an asshole!”

“He almost died!” El shouted, tears in her eyes. “If…if I just talked to him, if I just told him I understood…”

“El, listen to yourself!” Mike shouted, standing in front of her and placing his hands on her shoulders. “This is exactly what happened at the warehouse when you said you didn’t want Papa to die! Why would you go out of your way to be nice to people who basically abused you? You deserve better than that!”

“It’s not about me!” El shouted, her breathing heavy and pulse racing. “He hurt himself. Nobody should hurt himself.”

“Right – and that’s his problem, not yours. I can see you’re blaming yourself, El, and it’s not your fault! Do you hear me? It’s NOT your fault! And if you go tell Will, he’s going to think it’s his fault, too. He’s going through enough. Are you seriously going to do that to him?”

“I’m not doing ANYTHING to him!” El shouted, feeling herself get angry at Mike’s insistence that he knew better than she did. “I’m just telling him what happened. He and Paul are…whatever. He deserves to know.”

“He and Paul are nothing because Paul is an asshole! I’m sorry! He shouldn’t have hurt himself and I feel bad that that’s the only way he thought he could deal with it, but it doesn’t make what he’s done to you okay. And I won’t let you and Will blame yourselves for HIS issues.”

“You can’t tell me what to do!” El insisted. “That’s what Max said. She said I’m not yours. She said I’m my own person.”

Mike ran his hands through his hair, frustrated beyond anything. Why did this always have to come up as a control issue? Why was he punished for not wanting to see the girl he loved and his best friend hurt?

“El, you’re not listening to me! You don’t get it – don’t let him make a fool out of you!” 

A fool.

Mike just suggested that El was a fool.

Her face flushed red in anger. She tried so hard every day to get him to respect her. To be smarter for him and know more about the world. She gave herself no free time; spent every waking hour of the night and weekend that most other kids went out and did fun things studying so that she could measure up. And no matter what she did, he still said she looked like a fool.

“I’m NOT a FOOL!” El shouted, moving past him. He hurried after her, realizing what he said.

“I didn’t say YOU were a fool, El, I just meant…”

“STOP trying to TEACH me things. I’m NOT STUPID!” El shouted in his face, and hurried away from him into the apartment building. Mike kicked a rock that lay before him on the ground loudly, his anger consuming him.

“FUCK!” he shouted. Of course, in the months of shit he had to deal with, he couldn’t even have the one day he looked forward to with his girlfriend, because some shit who couldn’t handle his issues had to drag her into his issues. 

Fine. If she wanted to go to the hospital, let her. He wouldn’t go with her. Let Will do that if he wanted to. If she wanted to be an absolute sucker, it would be her issue. Not his.

_______________________________________________________________  
About an hour later, El got in the taxi she got herself with the little money she had in her piggy bank that Joyce allowed her to keep from whatever savings Hop put aside for her in the bank. Joyce wasn’t excited about her going to the hospital, shouting at her not to go as she was leaving the apartment. She told her she would miss another two weeks of soaps, but it didn’t matter to El; she couldn’t help but feel like she had something to do with what happened to Paul, and she wouldn’t feel better until she tried to talk to him about it. Will wanted to go, but didn’t think he should because Paul’s family would be there, and given what he was going through, perhaps that wasn’t the best idea.

When she got to the hospital, she knew it would be a challenge to see Paul. His family was there with him, and she’d prefer to get him on his own. She lied to the nurse on duty and told her that he was a half sister. She was given his room and, when she got around the corner from it, she gazed at it.

In the crack in the door, she could see his parents, crying in front of him. However, it didn’t look like complete sadness. She wished she could hear what they were saying.

She turned around, leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and pictured Mike the way that she saw him at Kali’s. For a moment, she forgot about Paul, and her heart hurt leaving things with Mike as she did when she stormed out of the house. She was offended that he once again suggested she was stupid, but she knew he was trying to help her. While she waited for the taxi, while Joyce chewed her ear off about her visit not being appropriate from outside the shut door, she wrote Mike a letter that she left in his bag of clothes sitting in her room. When she got back, she’d leave it on his pillow so that he could read it in the morning, and maybe they’d be able to talk about it. 

For now, though, she thought about the awful possibility that this was real; that Mike in that condition were the last she saw of him after their argument. She closed her eyes and focused.

_His parents – two attractive, clean cut, perfectly polished adults dressed to the nines, obviously prepared for Thanksgiving plans that were abruptly canceled, were arguing with each other, tears streaming down their face._

_“Are you BLAMING me, Brad?”_

_“Not blaming, Mary, but you’re the one who told him it was early admissions to Yale or how embarrassed you’d be with your PTA group.”_

_“I was joking, Brad! Like you didn’t get on him every single time he didn’t get above a 95 on a test.”_

_“Look, I thought we agreed we wanted to raise our kids to work to their potential.”_

_“It’s not that,” came another voice. A girl – one who looked maybe a year or two younger than Paul, wiped her eyes from the edge of Paul’s bed, where he sat sadly. “He’s been tutoring a girl…this girl Jane.. There was an incident at school; he yelled at her for something. I think he was mad about something and now she hates him…”_

_“Alison, give me a break!” his mother screamed, looking at the girl like she ought to be ashamed of herself for making such a suggestion. “Do you honestly think that Paul would have done something like THIS over some GIRL? Some girl who is so far behind him academically that she needs tutoring?”_

_“What does that matter?” The girl shouted. “He can only date smart girls, or what?”_

“Smart girls,” El whispered to herself, a tear rolling down her face. The mere idea of her dating Paul was disgusting to his family. Not that she wanted to date him, not that it was even option, but the mere idea of someone as awful, as stupid as El being in Paul’s life was disgusting to them. She WAS stupid. A FOOL. Just like Mike said.

What WAS she doing here? The damage was done. There was no more she could do. Joyce was right. Mike was right. This was a mistake.

She wiped her eyes and started walking toward the payphone down the hall to call the taxi back. As she passed an empty hospital room, she heard a shout.

“Help me!” came a voice. She turned behind her to see if there were any nurses nearby who could help. None were around. She reluctantly walked into the room to see the curtain drawn in front of a hospital bed. There seemed to be the shadow of someone standing behind it. Wasn’t there someone there to help this person?

“Please,” came the voice. It was a man. It was weak, in pain. She knew that perhaps it wasn’t her issue, but she just felt funny leaving him to suffer. She slowly walked over to the bed behind the curtain, her eyes focused on the bed, when she felt a sharp pinch in her neck. In the instant it happened, she knew something was off; wrong. She felt dizziness immediately and the urge to scream, but a large, gloved hand covered her mouth and she felt herself fall backwards and land on something soft. She felt straps tighten above her, and, in the few terrifying seconds that she would remember, she felt a blanket cover her before the entire world went black.

________________________________________________________________________________________

“Will? Mike? El? Anyone? Do you copy?”

Will and Mike, who were sitting in Will’s room discussing the Paul situation, with Will assuring Mike that El was probably upset and they’d be back to their old mushy selves in no time, were interrupted by the terrified voice of Max on the other end. 

Why was she using Cerebro? 

Wasn’t she with her family today?

“Max?” Will aksed, grabbing his radio. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”

“Where’s El?” Max asked, and Mike’s eyes instantly widened. This didn’t sound good; why would she be asking that?

“She…that Paul guy, he tried to hurt himself. My mom didn’t want her to but she went to the hospital to…”

“FUCK!” Max exclaimed, and Mike jumped up and grabbed the radio from Will.

“Max, what are you talking about?” he asked, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. “What’s wrong?”

“You have to get to the hospital right now and find her,” Max said. “Holly…I passed your house this morning and she had a vision. She saw El at a hospital. Being taken.”

Taken.

Shit.

No, no, no…this vision couldn’t be real. It had to be something Holly imagined. There was no way…

But there was no risking it. Mike ran to Nancy and Jonathan, told them what Max had said, and they ran to the car to try to find her before it was too late.

_________________________

El’s head felt like a bowling ball.

It was heavy and it pounded, but that wasn’t the worst discomfort she felt. 

She was tightly strapped to a chair in sitting position. There were metallic ropes securing her to the spot, scratching and burning her skin. Her clothes were removed and she was sitting in a hospital gown. The feel of the paper crumpling from under her brought her back to a time that felt so long ago – a time before Mike and Mrs. Byers and Will and Hop when all she knew was a bleakness, whiteness, and orders.

The room was blurry, different than any she’d been in, but familiar. It was one of those cold, desolate, lifeless rooms. It felt even colder with her legs bare and exposed to the sterile, artificial air that she breathed in for the first twelve years of her life. Tears started forming in her eyes as she willed more than anything else to scream.

This was a bad dream. It had to be. She would be back at her home soon, in that little bedroom of the apartment that she’d grown to love and with the family she’d grown to love. She’d wrap her arms around Mike and forgive him for being angry, just as long as she got to feel his long, lanky arms warmly hold her again. To feel anything. Anything but pain throughout her body, dizziness and nausea…

Nausea…

The food that she’d devoured mere hours before came up in chunks, cascading right into her lap. She tried her best to land everything on the floor, but she was so tightly restrained she couldn’t move.

A voice – a familiar voice that sent shivers up her spine – gave directions.

“Clean her up and get her a new gown.”

Two figures in white came over to her, and she felt the ease of the ropes loosen as they removed them. One took a damp, cold cloth and wiped her already cold legs thoroughly. Another ripped off her paper gown, leaving her completely unexposed. She wanted to scream, yell, use her powers as she’d been doing for the last week, but she couldn’t do anything. She was so dizzy and weak, she could barely move. Another paper gown replaced the one she had soiled, and she was thrust back into the chair, the straps tightly fastened. Then, she saw a shadow emerge.

She recognized his white hair. His clean suit. His face – although it had changed. There was a huge scar where clean cut cheekbones used to be. Or several; she was so dizzy it was hard to tell. But his smile…his deceiving, cunning smile hadn’t changed.

“Hello, Eleven.”

_______________________________________________________________________________

“I’m going to ask you again – where did you see her go?”

“And I’m going to TELL you again – my job is checking people in, not escorting them to the patients they’re here to visit!” 

Since Mike was panicked to the point that he was virtually mute, Nancy took over the futile task of attempting to discover where El was. They got as far as to discover that she came to see Paul and listed herself as his half-sister. Since then, nobody had seen her. The family had been in the room with Paul the entire time. Nancy felt bad disturbing them at a time like this, so a nurse asked if another family member had been in to see him, which prompted them to chase the nurse out and file a complaint with the hospitality staff for her insensitivity in confusing families at a time like this. At that point, the hospital wasn’t very cooperative in trying to get them the information they needed.

“But she was here. You SAW her here,” Nancy continued. The woman behind the desk stood up confrontationally, her hand on her hip. 

“YES, I saw her here. You’ll excuse me if, while I gave up my Thanksgiving with MY family to work, I didn’t feel like following a CHILD around the hospital. It is not MY responsibility that you can’t control your…what did you say she was?”

“A…cousin,” Nancy stuttered, turning to Jonathan and Mike awkwardly. She gave Mike a quick look. His skin was paler than usual. He looked like he was going to break down if they didn’t find her soon.

“Look,” Nancy continued. “Can we look around? See if maybe she…I don’t know, got lost?”

“As long as you don’t disturb any of the patients OR me any longer than you have to,” the worker grunted, and sat back down. Mike ran first, hurrying down the hallway and looking in just about every room to see if there was anyone El may have mistaken for Paul. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well after all that she ate and lay in an empty room to relax. Something – anything. What Holly saw couldn’t have been true.

As he, Nancy and Jonathan searched every room they could ethically examine, they saw a head nurse call a team of nurses over in a panic. Nancy turned to the boys and whispered.

“Wait here.”

She hurried to the wall nearest them without trying to look obvious, and tried to catch bits of their conversation. This didn’t look like a standard meeting. It looked like an emergency.

“A stretcher was taken out of this unit without authorization today,” she heard the head nurse say. “We’re not quite sure if the person on the stretcher was a patient, but the cameras recording it showed that the person handling the stretcher was NOT a hospital employee. If any of you saw ANYTHING, please report it to your supervisor. We think we may have a very serious situation on our hands.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Tears fell from El’s face, and crying was about the only thing she could do. She was numb – from pain, from hurt, from her broken and shattered heart that worsened each second that she looked into the face of the man who destroyed her once and somehow managed to get his hands on her again.

“How you’ve grown,” Papa continued, getting closer to her and kneeling down in front of her. “You're a lovely young woman and I'm…well, like this.”

A whimper escaped El’s mouth; a terrified, despairing whimper that begged for him to stop, to let her go, to set her free.

“You shouldn’t have left,” he said, a little more forcefully, and, while he was usually very controlled and calm, this sounded almost like a reprimanding; like he could barely contain his rage. “That was very, very wrong of you, Eleven. To be with those…people. You’re NOTHING like those people. Do you know the damage you have caused by being away from here – away from me? That will never happen again. You were meant to stay here. Forever.”

And, hearing that, El somehow found the strength to shout out the one name that always brought her comfort…

“Mike!” she called in a futile hope that, perhaps, he knew where she was; he may be able to sense her.

“Eleven,” Papa continued in a warning tone. “He’s not here. None of that now. You may notice you feel a little weak. That’s normal. We’ve given you a very heavy sedative as we expected that you wouldn’t come back to me easily. But…you are back with me. And this is where you’re going to stay. It’s where you belong.”

Her whimpering escalated to a wail, a loud yell that she couldn’t believe she had the strength to produce, tears cascading down her face like a waterfall. She wished she could close her eyes and wake up from this nightmare, but the man in front of her was real. Her worst fear was real. Papa had taken her back and there was no escape.

“Now, tomorrow, we are going to start with training. Your recklessness has cost you your powers, and I can get them back. You may resist, Eleven. You forget that we know who your family and friends are and it wouldn’t be in their best interest for you to fight this. Because, if you do resist, those people…I can make them disappear, do you understand? I’m sure you don’t want any of them to die, and neither do I, Eleven, but that’s up to you. You’ve been in that mediocre world that doesn’t understand you at all for too long and they’ve brainwashed you into thinking you can be like them. But you’re so much more extraordinary than them, Eleven.”

El managed to shake her head, giving him the angriest look she could produce with her muscles weakened and her will slowed down through the effects of the drug. 

“And now,” Papa continued. “To rid yourself of this…frivolous humanity you’ve acquired. It will only get in the way.” He turned to the two women who changed her, and stood up, retreating out of the room. “Now.”

And El would have screamed, she would have fought, but she couldn’t. She could only sit with her soul and her spirit terribly bruised as the two women who stripped her of her gown, her dignity, and her freedom took a pair of scissors and buzzer. She heard snipping and felt chunks of her hair – her long, flowing, wavy hair that Mike loved and caressed, that he so gently brushed out of her face, falling to the ground beneath her, before the terrifying hum of the buzzer traveled across what remained on her head.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

In desperation, Nancy, Jonathan and Mike hurried back to the house, telling a panicked Joyce and Will what they’d heard. There was no mistake. El had been taken.

Mike was in a fog the entire time, all he could think about was how he had let his pride stop him from going with her, from being there so that she wouldn’t be alone and she wouldn’t be as easily taken. Fearing beyond anything that he wouldn’t see her again. He rummaged through her room for any clue whatsoever of where she may be, any visions she may have recorded in a journal or a notebook, anything, as Joyce told the others that calling the police would be useless; the police supported Brenner in his operation, and they would never assist in going over the government’s head to find her. They’d have to find a way of finding her themselves.

Then, as he was searching, he found it. A folded-up piece of paper halfway sticking out of his duffel bag which he KNEW wasn’t there before. He read it in desperation, hoping to find any hint that, maybe, she saw Hopper somewhere and that could give them some hint of where she was. Nothing. Nothing but words that broke his heart as he was reminded that he made her feel stupid in the last moments that he had with her before she disappeared. Vanished. Went back to that abusive son of a bitch who was doing God-knows-what to her.

All of this was interrupted as the phone rang. He hurried to the living room where the others were assembled hoping it would be her; hoping she had managed to escape and was calling them. 

Mrs. Byers had picked up.

“…and who should I say is calling? Who? Look, we have an urgent situation here and…” Joyce froze to the spot. Something the person on the line said made her stop. She turned to Mike, her face stoic and worried as she handed the receiver over to him.

“It’s for you. A lady named Alice Johnson. She…she knows El.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story continues as the rest of the party discover what is going on with El and try to do what they can to stop it. Things get further complicated as Brenner's team try to get a hold of Holly. Thought you knew Ted Wheeler? Maybe you thought wrong. (Just remember his politics are not mine! Just keeping him in character!) Enjoy!

_11/28/86_

_Dear El,_

_I know that this is kind of silly, and I don’t know if this will work, but I have to try. Will suggested that I write a letter to try to reach you. It’s hard to write because I can’t do too much of anything right now. I can’t eat. I can’t breathe. I’m terrified, I’m depressed, and I’m sorry. So, so sorry. I should have been with you, I should have protected you, I shouldn’t have let you go to that hospital by yourself, and I’ve failed. I made you feel stupid and you’re not. You’re not, you’re not, you’re not. You’re one of the smartest people I know, and it doesn’t matter what grades you get in school or which spelling patterns you have trouble learning about. You’re smart enough to somehow survive all that you’ve survived. Not every person can do that. You’re different. You’re special. You’re beautiful. You’re SMART. And you’ll be okay. Please. You have to be okay. I don’t know what I’ll do if anything happens to you; I don’t even want to think about that._

_I don’t know how your powers work now that they’re coming back, and I’m trying the best I can to feel you enough so that you reach me. I hope you try to reach me. I hope they haven’t done anything to stop you from reaching me. Because there’s something I need to tell you. You have to find your mom. There’s something important – something that can stop all these bad things from happening, and you HAVE to find your mom. You won’t like it. You won’t. And I’m sorry you’ll have to hear about it, but, if it’s true, it can fix everything._

_Please, El – PLEASE – be strong and be tough. I don’t know if you can read this; if you can see me writing it, but, if you can, please…know how much I love you. I love you more than anything. I love you so much that not knowing where you are, not being able to help you is breaking me._

_I hope I see you soon._

_Love,_

_Mike_

____________________________________________________________________________

Mike picked up the receiver reluctantly.

“H-hello?” he asked, not having a clue as to who this person was.

“Michael Wheeler?” came the voice on the other line. It was a sweet voice. A kind one. He somehow felt he could trust it.

“Yes?”

“You’re…you’re the boy dating Terry’s daughter? Jane?”

“El,” Mike corrected, suddenly feeling like making this distinction was important. 

“Is…that what you call her?”

“Yeah, and she’s missing right now, so unless you happen to know something about…”

“Missing?” the voice on the other end asked, worried. Mike sighed deeply and closed his eyes, wishing once again he could will the entire thing into being a dream.

“Yes.”

“Do you suspect that Dr. Brenner has taken her?” 

Mike froze.

Who was this person? How did he know that she was okay? How did she know who Dr. Brenner even was?

“Who are you?” he asked. “What is this about? How do I know you’re not working for that asshole?”

“Mike!” Nancy exclaimed, with Joyce echoing her, but he didn’t listen. He held out a hand to silence them. The voice on the other line sighed.

“At one point, I was one of his subjects. MK Ultra.”

“MK Ultra?” Mike asked. Joyce raised her eyebrows and hurried over to Mike, whispering to him.

“Before he worked with kids, they were his experimental subjects,” she told him. “Hop and I found out about them. She was a lab subject with El’s mom.” Mike felt a bit of relief at this, but still was skeptical. What if some of the lab subjects turned?

“I knew Terry Ives,” Alice explained from the other end. “We were onto Dr. Brenner doing some bad things. He experimented with a girl named Kali…”

“El’s sister,” Mike said. “That’s what she calls her.”

“You’ve seen Kali?” Alice asked, interested. She remembered that beautiful little girl from years ago. “Is she okay?”

“She’s a vigilante killer in hiding,” Mike continued. “So…you make your own judgment.” Alice wasn’t surprised at the vigilante part, after hearing Seamus share his story, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

“Mike…I haven’t been involved in Dr. Brenner’s experiments since the 70s. I left; I had to fake my own death to get out of there. Since then I’ve been living under an alias and doing mechanical work; but, while I was there, I had visions. Visions of J…of El. I still have them. And I’ve seen what she’s been through. This man who used to work at the lab, this man Seaumus, he’s been secretly researching this other world…”

“Seamus? I thought Kali killed him.”

“She tried. He’s top of his field for a reason, Mike. He knew that Kali and her crew have been trying to kill lab associates and he protected himself with a bullet proof vest.”

“So he knows about The Upside Down,” Mike cut in. 

“Is that…what you call where the monsters come from?”

“Yes. What about it?” Mike asked. Everyone was looking at him eagerly, curious about what he was saying. He gestured for Joyce that he needed a pen. He wanted to document all of this. 

“There’s this thing called String Theory…”

______________________________________________________________________________

“Steve, I need you to drive me, Max and Lucas to Illinois.”

Steve, having escaped his boring family dinner and found solace in the quiet of his room, was not expecting this call from Dustin at 9 PM on Thanksgiving.

“I think you’ve got your holidays confused, Henderson,” Steve told him. “Thanksgiving is when you eat too much and watch football. April Fool’s Day is when you prank people like this.”

“I’m serious!” Dustin shouted. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t a total emergency. Max had a vision of El being taken by that scientist again and it turns out it was real. She went to the hospital to visit some friend and she was taken.”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down!” Steve retorted, sitting up. “What the hell are you talking about, Henderson? How did some scientist take El? I thought they had her on lock and key after she and Mike ran off into the sunset last week?”

“It’s…hard to explain. We only heard minor details of who this guy she visited is, but we’ll fill you in on the drive.”

“No, this is not happening,” Steve told him. “I have to work a double at the video store tomorrow and…”

“I thought of that, and Robin got Keith to call in two of his buddies to cover for you and her tomorrow. Turns out that he has a bit of a crush on her and she’s been using it to her advantage. He felt really bad that the chow mein the two of you guys had was really bad and the doctor said your stomach bug could last you through the weekend.”

“Keith has FRIENDS? And…what, wait, why is Robin coming?” 

“Because you suck at directions and you need a good navigator. And plus, she’s cool.” Steve sighed, and looked at his bedroom door. As much as he hated being signed up for a road trip like this without his consent, it sure did beat working a double the next day and hearing his parents talk about what a disappointment he was.

“Fine. Give me some time to get myself ready here and I’ll come and get you guys.” 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

“Mr. Richards, after thoroughly examining your son, I really think it would be to your benefit to call the police…this drug was injected.”

Brad Richards turned to Mary, who was holding on to his arm, tears coming out of her eyes. They looked at each other and then at the hospital workers.

“H-how do you know?” Brad asked. The doctor looked at his notes.

“According to the blood samples we drew this morning, the drug has been his system for approximately 15 hours. However, Paul was found by his friends unconscious in just a little over 14 hours. If these were pills, they would not have metabolized in Paul’s system for a couple of hours. So, we checked his arm for signs of injection and, sure enough, whoever administered the injection did a sloppy job. There was a little scar accompanied with some bruising.”

“So…so Paul didn’t try to…to do this to himself?”

“Not unless he injected himself,” the doctor stressed. “Although, if that were the case, there wouldn’t be a container of pills alongside him. This was a set up. Someone injected your son with the intent of making it appear as though he attempted to kill himself.”

“And…he wasn’t intoxicated?” Brad asked, and Mary gave him a look of disgust. That was his concern?

“Oh, he was highly intoxicated,” the doctor continued. “He had enough in his system to relax his inhibitions and make this injection easier to administer. But, given the evidence we have, we are taking him off suicide watch and I strongly suggest that you use the medical report to hire yourselves a good detective. This was a targeted situation. Someone did this to your son. I will file the paperwork, notify local authorities and we’ll run some more tests. If Paul is rehydrated, he can be discharged tonight.” The doctor walked out of the room, and Mary and Brad turned to each other, terrified.

“Who would try to hurt Paul?” Mary asked, tears filling her eyes. “Paul he’s such…he’s such a good boy…”

“Maybe…maybe it wasn’t meant for him,” Brad told her. “Maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“But why him, Brad? Why HIM?”

“We’ll call the police and file a report,” he said, giving her a hug. “There has to be a reason for this.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________

El awoke in a cell. Her eyes opened to the blurry vision of a small, isolated room with a tiny, uncomfortable bed.

Her hand instinctively went to her head…

It wasn't a nightmare. Her hair...

Gone.

And in the place of her hair – the hair she grew and took care of, she brushed and put into ponytails, that Mike caressed gently and loved – was peach fuzz covered with wires.

Wires?

Why were there wires on her head?

She sat up and felt a group of heavy wires accompany her and a machine on wheels alongside her bed.

She wasn’t woozy or drowsy anymore. The effects of the sedative had worn off.

A scream escaped her throat. A loud, angry, scream. Footsteps ran into the room and two men restrained her as she tried desperately to unhook herself to the wires connecting her to a machine alongside the bed. Soon after they grabbed her on each side and held her down, Papa came in, an angry look on his face.

“Eleven, I suggest you stop or we’ll have to give you a second dose of that sedative.”

“I don’t CARE!” El shouted. “I don’t WANT to be here! I want to go home!”

“This IS your home, Eleven,” Papa calmly reminded her, sitting alongside her and looking at her frantic face. “This is where you BELONG.”

“NO!” El shouted. “I have a home. I have a family…”

“And they are better off without you,” Papa told her. “You’re dangerous, Eleven. You can be, if you’re with people who don’t know how to handle you.”

“Not anymore,” El insisted. “I’m not, I’m…I’m just like anyone else…”

“No, you aren’t, and you know it,” Papa continued. “And I’ll remind you one more time to calm down or there will be consequences.” He walked over to a blank monitor on the other side of the room. He flipped a switch, and El stopped shaking and examined it.

A man was in a cell, looking beaten, bloody, and defeated. His features were barely recognizable. He had the look of a man who was once bigger and burlier and who had lost a lot of weight very quickly. His beard was down to his chest, his hair was long, and his face and body were covered in bruises. Despite all that, El recognized him right away.

“Hop?” she asked, tears shining in her eyes.

“Yes, chief Hopper ended up in the other world and was taken out in Russia somehow,” Dr. Brenner told her. “He was imprisoned there until we had a member of the US army – an old friend of his – sneak him out and bring him back here. Now, we can keep him safe. Let him go. Let him live his life again …or not. That all depends on YOU, Eleven. Do you want him to live?”

The tears flowed smoothly down El’s face, but she stayed steady; calm. She knew her Papa. He was a man of his word. One wrong move, and he could kill the man she longed to see alive since last summer. 

“Good,” Papa told her. “Then you will stop crying. You will stop with this little girl nonsense. You are not a little girl. You’re a powerful young woman and your country needs you. There is much to be done and no time to waste.”

He sat down alongside her and looked at her seriously in the face.

“You are old enough to know context, Eleven. The United States is in an ongoing competition with Russia. We are eager to be the most advanced in the pursuit of scientific advancements. Space exploration, the universe, our world, other worlds. Three years ago, you opened up this new world. We’ve kept it quiet here, but the scientific community talks. The Russian community is eager to get into this world, too. They have had Chief Hopper explore it to find out more about it…but he’s not you. He lacks the means to survive there or to find anything meaningful. You can. We are going to have you explore it.”

El’s heart beat rapidly inside her chest. She had been in that horrible place – that cold, lifeless place – and she really had no desire to be there again.

But it would save Hop…

“N-now?” she asked. Papa shook his head.

“You’ll need training first. Exercises. Your powers were weakened through fighting last year, but we can fix that. We’ve seen it in lab patients before. And when we feel that you’re strong enough, we will explore further. In the meantime, we need you to give us some information.”

“I-information?”

His eyes met hers and his voice got colder than before.

“Who is Holly?”  
_______________________________________________________________________________________

“That enormous thing was El?” Nancy asked, as they all sat in the living room trying to make sense of what Alice told them.

“No, not El…it was her parallel form. Parallel forms take different shape in other universes. They’re not human. They’re different.”

“That thing was a girl?” Will asked. They all turned to him, giving him the same look. “What?”

“But wait,” Joyce said. “Will…said that he could sense the shadow monster. Why didn’t he get the same feeling around El?”

“I…have had a similar feeling lately,” Will told them, and, they all started shouting at once.

“You tell us this now?”

“What feeling?”

“The same thing?”

“NOT the same!” Will shouted, prompting everyone to be quiet. “It’s not; I would tell you if it was. I felt it in my neck most; that feeling of falling otherwise. But, I don’t know, it’ll come and go. Just a much less dramatic version of that feeling. And I haven’t in a while…just…when she got visions, I guess. When little bits of her powers were working.”

“Because her powers are the strongest connection she and this THING have,” Mike cut in. “This thing isn’t human. It has a parallel experience to El; a parallel story. She was created by the Brenner parallel. The Demogorgon; it trained her to be the monster that she is. The Shadow Monster wasn’t there or nearly as strong until AFTER the Demogorgon was. And, like El, it has…resentment. Anger that this Brenner parallel made it what it was. Only unlike El, who’s trying to move on, this thing is animalistic and angry and won’t rest until he’s dead. Only thing is, she doesn’t realize that the Brenner in HER world is dead because OUR Brenner is still here, and the gate is open, so she still senses his energy. She’s not strong enough to kill it; she’s dust and ash and energy at this point. But El – El, her parallel form, can. And she won’t retreat back into her world until she gets her vengeance.”

“And with the gate open…” Nancy continued.

“It’ll be chaos,” Mike said. “If there are those parallel forms, there are others. Brenner came first because he was the only person El knew, and the one she was interacting with here. If the parallel, monstrous forms of other people come out, it’ll throw us all into disarray.”

“Is that why El lost her powers?” Jonathan asked, and Mike nodded.

“Exactly. This thing trying to possess her was like her own body attacking itself; like one of those immune disorders that impacts your brain. This impacted the part of her brain that automatically controlled her powers; consumed it and, once it got out of her leg, it was gone. The powers were there, but she had to relearn how to use them. It’s like Kali said – almost like a stroke patient.”

“But…could El kill him?” Nancy asked. “You said that she didn’t like the idea of Brenner having to die.”

“That’s the problem,” Mike told her. “Getting her to do it. It’s an emotional thing for her. That’s if we can even reach her.”

“So, what did she tell you to do?” Will asked.

“I have to try to reach her. Try to just…meditate and think about her. She…this scientist Kali tried to kill, anyway…thinks that she cares enough about me that she can sense me. She sensed Hop. That maybe I should…talk to her and hope she can hear me.”

“Write her a letter,” Will quietly said. They all turned to him.

“What?” Joyce asked.

“Mike writes her letters,” Will continued. “Every week, sometimes more than one. If you pour your heart out in a letter, tell her how you miss her, maybe she’ll…sense it. The same way she sensed Hop.”

“Worth a try,” Nancy suggested, reaching a hand toward Mike’s and giving it a squeeze.

“Meanwhile, we’re getting Murray on this,” Joyce cut in. “We’ve narrowed Hop’s location down to four places based upon research we’ve both been doing. We’ll try to reach El if we can, but, in the meantime, we’ll see if we can find her.”

“WILL, DO YOU COPY? WILL, DO YOU COPY?” A radio signal came from Will’s room and he ran in to get it, turning to the others.

“Sounds like Dustin…be right back.”

He ran into his room and picked up his radio.

“Dustin, it’s Will. I copy. What’s up?”

“You guys better make some room in that apartment,” Dustin told him. “We never abandon party members when they’re in trouble.”

“What?” Will asked.

“Well, I’m sleeping over Lucas’s and Lucas is sleeping over my house and Max is staying with the Wheelers for the weekend to help out with Holly and Steve and Robin each got a really crappy stomach bug from the bad takeout they had sent to the video store…so naturally we’re all on our way to Illinois to help you.” A huge smile grew on Will’s face.

“You guys…”

“You can’t do this alone. You’ll need some people at home and some out looking. And the more hands, the better, right?”

Mike came into the doorway.

“What’s going on?”

“They’re coming. They’re coming to help.”

______________________________________________________________________________________

Kali sensed something was wrong.

She couldn’t explain it. She didn’t have powers like Jane did, but she had instinct. She had been through enough and seen enough people she cared about suffer, and she had a feeling something wasn’t right.

El got in the habit of radioing her when she could to let her know how progress was going, but it had been a couple of days. Granted, it was Thanksgiving and now Jane had a family. They probably tried to play the happy American family game and have a big dinner as though Jane was a perfectly normal girl. 

Still…she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

She grabbed her radio and dialed Jane’s frequency.

“Jane, It’s Kali. Do you copy?”

There was silence. Nothing.

“Jane? Sister it’s…”

There was something on the other end. Someone picked up.

“Kali?”

“Olive? Where’s Jane?”

There was a pause. Kali felt her heart beating rapidly.

“She’s…your Papa…he…”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Kali quickly placed the radio to her mouth.

“I’m coming over there.”  
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

“H-Holly?” El asked, trying to pretend as though she had no clue what he was talking about. A sinister chuckle escaped his throat.

“Surely, Eleven, you haven’t forgotten that you can’t lie to me.” He flicked a switch and a jolt of electricity surged through her body, stinging on every wire attached to her. She convulsed and wailed, and waited, as she used to, for it to calm down. A lump in her throat nearly suffocated her. She didn’t want Papa to find Holly; not Mike’s little sister. He couldn’t take her, too.

“She’s…a little girl.”

“Yes. She’s the Wheeler boy’s sister.”

“Don’t talk about him,” El demanded, forgetting, again, that she was hooked up to wires. The sound of Papa saying “The Wheeler Boy” did something to her, and, as she sat up and defiantly spoke back to her Papa, the lights went out and back on again. Papa froze, and flicked the switch again, for longer this time.

Her body convulsed again, and she felt herself tremble from her head down to her toes. 

“You forget the balance of powers here, Eleven. I give the orders. I ask the questions. You respond appropriately, you don’t overstep your boundaries, or there will be consequences. Understand?” El, still shaking from the shock imposed upon her body, nodded.

“Good. Now let’s continue. In the radio conversations between you and Michael Wheeler that we intercepted, my team and I learned that this girl has abilities. Abilities that can help all of us here in the United States learn more about this world. It would be extremely selfish and unfair for her family to prevent her from helping our entire country, now, don’t you think?”

El didn’t answer. She didn’t want to, because the answer she hoped to give included a steam of bad words she heard Mike use when he was angry. She just nodded. It was the safest way.

“Now, tell us more about what you know of these powers.”

“She…can see things. She sees me. She sees Will. She sees Hop…”

“Interesting,” Dr. Brenner said. “I will send an officer over to the Wheeler house to collect her. One should do it; his father is beyond compliant.” 

Panic rose in El and she wanted to scream, to stop him. But she looked in the monitor at Hopper, who was shaking and shivering and looking incredibly sick, and she decided she couldn’t. Instead, she’d try another way.

Her powers had been working better. Holly was in danger. If Holly was hurt, Mike would be heartbroken. She had to reach him. She had to find him in the void somehow and tell him to protect Holly, but she had no idea if she could. He said he sensed her before, but could he HEAR her?

“Very well,” Papa told her. “I will give you the night to work off the effects of the shock. Then, tomorrow morning, you will train with me. Understand?” El nodded, and the guards let her go, then tied her wrists to the edge of the hospital bed. El looked at Papa pleadingly.

“We can’t have you running. If you need to relieve yourself, there’s a bedpan here. No worries. I will see you in a few hours, Eleven.” With that, he and the guards left her. They closed the lights.

She was alone in the dark. Shivering, trembling, horrified.

No. She wouldn’t just sit here and cry. She would fight. She would do her best.

She closed her eyes and thought of Mike crying over Holly. She thought of him crumpled into a ball wondering where his little sister was. Then, she focused on him deeply. 

He was writing her a letter. She walked closer to read it over his shoulder, trying to ignore her immediate desire to break down and cry upon examining the look of terror and sadness on his face as tears steadily streamed out of his eyes. Seeing him in pain like this made her powers stronger, the vision on the letter clearer…

She read about how sorry he was and how he thought it was his fault. Her heart broke. She didn’t like how he spoke to her, and she felt some comfort knowing that he wasn’t proud of it, but that was all so far away. She just wanted him back. To feel him, to touch him, to let him know she was okay.

Then she read the weird part…

She had to try to reach her mother.

Her mother?

She hadn’t tried to reach her mother in the longest time. But she had done to Billy in the void what she did to her mother in real life. There had to be a way.

Meanwhile, she tried to get Mike to listen to her.

She leaned into Mike and held him from behind. Maybe he could sense her touch…maybe he could FEEL her.

He tensed. 

It was working.

“Holly,” she said, whispering into his ear. He shuddered.

“E-El?” he asked, reaching behind him definitely. He felt her touch, but not her form. He scrambled, reaching desperately. 

“Holly,” El repeated, looking right at him, although it appeared he couldn’t hear her either. “Tell your parents…get her and hide!”

“El! El, if you’re here please say something! Or give me a sign! Please, El…”

He couldn't her her. But maybe a sign.

A sign…

That was it.

El took her hand and traced letters on his back. He stiffened, focusing.

H…

“Okay, H…” Mike repeated, and El breathed a sigh of relief and continued.

I…

D…

E…

“Hide…hide? Should we hide, is he after us?”

El made an X, he nodded, and she continued.

H…

O…

L…

L…

Y…

“Hide…Holly? Hide Holly? Why, El, is she in trouble? Does…does your Papa know about her?” Sighing deeply, El spelled yes. Mike, startled, jumped up.

“El…I’m going to call my parents. Just…be careful, okay? And, if you can hear me…if you can, please…PLEASE…try to reach your mother. You’re going to hear something and it’s going to be hard, but it will help you, okay? You’re strong. You can do this. Can…can you tell me where you are?” El came behind him and spelled N-O on his back. She didn’t know where he was. He swallowed hard. “Are…are you okay?” Again, El spelled N-O, and his tears fell faster. He decided to try to be strong, though. “You’ll be okay, El. We’ll find you. Joyce’s friend Murray has an idea where you might be and we’ll get you out. I’ll call my parents. You call your mother. And…please…when you can, find me again, okay?” El spelled O-K. “Alright. I love you, El.” She spelled a heart, the letter U and a 2. Wiping away a tear, he ran into the other room and reached for the phone.

“Mike? What happened?” Joyce asked.

“She reached me. I have to call my parents.”

“Your parents? What…”

“Holly is in trouble.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

There was a frantic knock at the door. Karen looked at the clock in the kitchen as she had just finished cleaning up the mess from company. It was 10:30. Who would be knocking on the door this late at night? Did Ted’s brother forget his wallet again? 

“Coming,” she heard herself say, throwing her dish towel into the little laundry basket in the corner of the kitchen and hurrying toward the door. She gave a quick glance to the living room, where even Ted started to wake up, gazing in confusion from his La-Z-Boy.

“Karen, who’s that?”

“No idea,” Karen answered, and she opened the door to see a man in a suit holding a badge.

“Mrs. Wheeler?” came his voice, holding his badge up. “This is Agent Matthew Learson. I’m here on important government business.”

Oh, no…

This couldn’t be Michael again.

He was gone one day and already there were unusual visits to the house?

“Ted,” Mrs. Wheeler called, and Ted came to the door alongside her.

“Mr. Wheeler, I’m going to have to ask that you let me in.”

“What’s this about?” Ted asked, looking in confusion at the man at the door as he and Karen moved over to let him in. “Is this Michael? He’s out of town with some friends and…”

“We understand that there has been unusual activity surrounding your daughter Holly, and, under the authority of the United States Government, I have been commanded to take her into custody so that she can be studied.” Ted and Karen exchanged confused looks and Ted looked back.

“Sir, we are patriots here…we are. But Holly is a six-year-old girl. Surely there must be some mistake…”

“Trust me sir, as a patriot, there is no mistake and it is imperative that we collect…”

“She’s not a thing!” Karen shouted. “She’s not a thing for you to collect! She’s a little girl and you can’t just collect her.”

“Ma’am, settle down…”

“No, you will not tell my wife to settle down,” Ted interrupted, stepping in front of her. “Let me see your references, sir. A badge here isn’t enough; I’ve heard stories of fraudulent activity like this and I’d like to see the direct order given to you in writing regarding the need in taking my first grader out of my home.”

“Sir, you leave me no choice,” The officer said, reaching in his pocket for what Ted assumed was a weapon, but Ted worked faster…

…his fist landed directly in the officer’s face.

“TED!” Karen shouted in shock. He had never – EVER – struck another person before, let alone someone who may or may not be from the federal government. The man struggled on the floor, again reaching for his weapon, when Ted, in desperation, hurried to the living room and grabbed the heaviest, biggest thing he could get his hands on – his television – and unplugged it. With a grunt, he hurried back to the entryway and thrust the entire thing over the man’s head. He fell to the floor in a heap.

Karen stood, shocked.

With the man unconscious, Ted reached for his badge and looked at it.

“Ted, what are you doing?”

“It’s real,” Ted said. “These people…these people that took that Russian girl Michael hid…they’re going to do the same thing to Holly. They’re going to hide her and take away her hair…”

“W-what?” Karen asked, shock taking over her entire body. 

“You believed that whole story about the mall last summer, Karen?” Ted asked. “You really think Michael would have been shopping at the mall last summer in the middle of the night with the three dollars he had? There’s something weird going on. That Jimmy Carter – he got involved in some messy politics before Reagan took office and now they’re trying to clean it up. Bad research involving kids. And they brought it here – what do you think that lab was? I knew it was government. I told Michael ages ago.”

“So…what do we do?” Karen asked. Ted reached over, held her hand, and gave her a serious look.

“Go pack Holly’s things. And yours. And some of mine. I’ll get the car ready. We have to go. We have to get out of here. Out of town.” Karen nodded, hardly believing this was her husband. What had gotten into him? 

“Are…are you sure? I thought you trusted our government.” Karen asked. Ted looked at her grimly.

“I do until they threaten my wife and child.” Karen hurried over to him, wrapped her arms around him, and pressed a kiss to his face. He patted her back.

“Go…backup shouldn’t be far behind him. We can go to my brother in Ohio…”

“No, they’ll know to look there,” Karen interrupted. “Joyce. We’ll go to Joyce.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Are you telling me to leave the safety of my home to spend the weekend with an army of children?”

“No, you don’t have to leave anywhere,” Joyce told Murray later that day at Murray’s house, where he had left to try to find out more about El’s possible whereabouts.. “The kids are secure. Jonathan and Nancy are with them and they know not to open the door for anyone they don’t know. Besides…Nancy knows where my rifle is.”

“That little girl with a rifle? Don’t know if that sounds promising,” Murray commented, and Joyce gave him a scowl.

“Dr. Brenner has taken Eleven and is doing God knows what with her right now, and not only does that panic me as her guardian, but, according to this Alice person, it can kind of screw with the genetic mutation of our entire species as we know it, so I say you drop the bullshit sass act and help me out.” Murray raised his eyebrows and, drink in hand, hurried over to his wall full of maps, bullet points and articles.

“He can’t be far” Murray started. “If she was taken at the hospital, and she is currently able to contact Wheeler, then she must be settled in someplace. When did you eat dinner?”

“Three,” Joyce said. “She got to the hospital at around four thirty. We got a call from Max at around that time. The kids got back from the hospital at 6…”

“When did he channel her?”

“At about 9…maybe 9:30.”

“And you said she knew Holly was in trouble. She must not have just gotten there. She must have been there for some time. So, we’re talking a ride that had to have been 3 hours tops. She gets picked up at 4:45 or so, drives three hours, arrives where she is going at 7:45, Brenner gives her a talk and she finds out about Holly, she tries channeling Mike, which can take a while if she lost her powers…it has to be somewhere 3 or fewer hours away. That eliminates California.” (He ripped those papers off the wall), “Utah, and Montawk. We’re left with…”

“Carmel,” they both said. A mere hour from Hawkins. 

“NO wonder they didn’t pick up when Mike called. I hope he didn’t get to them already.”  
________________________________________________________________________________________________

The doorbell rang and Mike, frantic and pale, glanced cautiously at Will, who went to the buzzer.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Is this where Olive is?”

“Olive?” Nancy asked.

“She calls me Olive Oyl,” Mike replied, rolling his eyes, and Nancy, despite all the tension in the air, stifled a laugh.

“Damn, you know, now that you said that, you DO kind of…”

“Shut up,” Mike answered, hurrying over to the buzzer. “It’s me, Kali. Come in.” The buzzer went off and there was awkward silence as they awaited Kali’s entrance. Mike went to get the door and let her in. 

She stood out like a sour thumb. She was dark, overly made up, and beautiful. She donned a leather jacket over a dark miniskirt, black stockings, a loose dark shirt and tall black boots. She stepped into the apartment as though the domesticity of it was something that caused an allergic reaction.

“Olive,” she greeted.

“Hey,” he said. She stepped inside and looked around at everyone awkwardly.

“This…this is Kali,” Mike started. “And this is Will, and my sister Nancy, and her boyfriend Jonathan. Oh, and Leslie,” Mike said, pointing to Leslie who Will had called to invite over earlier that day. He looked from Kali to Leslie and back again, and their makeup looked identical.

“Nice shadow,” Kali told Leslie, and Leslie smiled. This looked like her sister, not El’s.

“Thanks.”

“So what happened, Olive?” Kali asked. “I thought you were taking care of Jane. You and this new family of hers”

“He was – we all were,” Will cut in defensively. “She ran off to the hospital to go see her tutor who tried to…he took a bunch of pills. She thinks she had something to do with it because they got into an argument the other day.”

“This is what happens when you have a conscience,” Kali said, rolling her eyes. “So, what, she went to the hospital unprotected and she was taken?”

“That’s what it looks like,” Mike told her. “But…she was able to reach me. I…I felt her.” Kali looked at him, surprised.

“Really? I didn’t know she could…”

“She couldn’t speak. She could touch. She wrote me notes on my back. And now my sister…Holly…they’re after her too. He knows about her.”

“Do you have any idea where they could be?” Nancy asked Kali. “She’s…she’s only six. Please.” Kali thought a moment, looking from one to the other.

“Knowing Papa, he would stay in Indiana. The gate, as you said, was there. He wouldn’t want to conduct his research too far from the source. But it couldn’t be too close, either, or he could be found.”

“There’s more,” Mike said. “There was a woman…she knew you actually.”

“What are you talking about, Olive?” Kali asked. “The only WOMAN I knew at that lab was Jane’s mother and…”

“No, you spoke to her too. A friend of Terry’s. Alice.” Kali stopped a minute, her eyes widening. She was a big, burly women. Tough. Strong. She died. That’s what she heard…

“She…she can’t. She’s dead…”

The buzzer went off and Will went over to get it. There was a din of noise echoing all at once.

“Will? It’s us…and…we’re not alone.”

“What?” Will asked. Everyone crowded over to the buzzer, frightened. Was this Brenner? Had he come after all of them too?

“What do you mean?”

“Michael? Michael, what’s going on? Why is everyone here?”

His mother.

What was his mother doing here?

(How were they going to fit all these people in this apartment?)

“Mom? Is…is Holly with you?”

“Yes, she’s here, and you have to know what…”

“Wait, Mom, wait until you’re upstairs. Just.. just…all of you…come up.” Will let them all in and Nancy advanced on him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Letting them in. They have Holly and she needs to be here.”

“What are we going to tell her?” Nancy asked, her eyes wide with panic.

“The truth,” Mike said firmly. “No more secrets. With any of us.”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

With prompting, Joyce got Murray in her car. It was now well after midnight, and, if they got a team together and hurried, they may be able to get to the area where the underground lab was expected to be. They could arrive by morning. They could hopefully get El and maybe Hop…

Somehow…

“What can these children possibly do to help us better find this place?”

“Nancy isn’t a child,” Joyce stressed. “She’s well over 18 and a good shot. She’ll be good to have around. Jonathan…he somehow got them all out of trouble the last few years. Plus Will said he was bringing a few more people to stay with the other kids, so they’ll be safe”

“And then what?” Joyce looked at him, lost.

“We’ll do it like we always do,” Joyce said, irately. “We’ll play it by ear and pray that it works.”

“Yeah, and the last time that happened, we thought we had Hop killed after hearing that toothless kid serenade his girlfriend for an hour.”

“Not this time; I just…I have a better feeling. They’re right under our noses, Murray. We’ll get them.” She abruptly pulled into her parking spot and Murray followed her into her apartment. She was in the stairwell when her downstairs neighbor opened the door.

“What have you got, a party going on there, Byers? Do you know what time it is?” Joyce turned in annoyance at the elderly woman in curlers at the lower level apartment and tried faking politeness. 

“So sorry, Elsie. It’s…the holidays, you know?”

“It’s after midnight and if you don’t keep it down up there I’m reporting you to the management. Again,” Elsie slammed the door behind her and Joyce rolled her eyes.

“How many people do you HAVE up there, anyway?” Murray asked.

“Well, it’s Mike, Will, Jonathan, Nancy, Kali if she got here, and Steve, Robin, Dustin, Max and Lucas if they got here. That’s all.”

“That’s ALL? Don’t you have a three-bedroom apartment? How are you going to accommodate this flock of freeloaders?” Joyce rolled her eyes at him and opened the door.

Everyone was squeezed into her living room – including Karen, Ted, and Holly, who was sleeping serenely on the couch.

What the hell was going on?

“Karen? Ted? What are you…”

“They know,” Mike told her. “They know…everything.” Ted stood up and approached Joyce, looking irate and annoyed.

“You…you knew about this for three years? Knew that our son was mixed up in this, and you…you didn’t tell us?”

“Ted,” Karen said alongside him, holding on to his arm.

“It was supposed to have ended three years ago,” Joyce explained. “In exchange for Will I had to keep silence. The same way that you were told to keep silent to protect your family. “ Ted breathed in heavy and looked over at Mike.

“After this – after you find this girl and you help her – that’s it, son. I won’t…I won’t let you see her anymore. Or Will.”

“Ted, stop it!” Karen shouted. 

“Smartest person here, in my opinion,” Kali commented, looking in admiration at Ted.

“You can’t!” Mike shouted, rounding in on his father. “You can’t, dad! She can’t help what she is, just like Holly can’t!”

“Holly was never taken by this man and she never will be!” Ted cut in. “Because without you seeing her – Jane, El, whatever you call her – there’s no risk.”

“There won’t be a risk,” Joyce stressed. “We are going to close this gate for good. It works. Scientifically.”

“Scientifically he’s my son, and that means what happens to him is up to me,” Ted argued. “And I don’t want to see him hurt because he has puppy love for some little girl.”

“It’s not puppy love and she’s not some little girl!” Mike argued, tears in his eyes. “She’s…she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. She’s sweet and loving and kind and true, and she cares more about me than you EVER did and EVER will!”

“MICHAEL!” Karen shouted, trying to control him. “Don’t SAY things like that!”

“You know it’s true!” Mike shouted. “He’s blaming Mrs. Byers! Dad, when’s the last time you even asked me how I WAS?”

“They say teenagers need space, give them space, you GIVE them space and they throw it in your face!” Ted shouted. “I’ve just been trying to give you room to breathe, son! You seemed like you needed it.”

“All of you stop!” Nancy shouted, getting in the middle of everyone. “Stop and listen, will you? Mike – I get that you’re upset, but that’s our dad. You…you can’t just talk to him like that. You haven’t reached out to him, either.”

“THANK you, Nancy! Someone with common sense!” Ted said, folding his arms.

“But dad…trust me, this isn’t puppy love. You know that picture you showed me? The one of you and Mom the year you proposed and you were just laughing and looking at each other?”

“Prettiest girl I ever saw,” Ted replied, softening a bit. He turned to her and gave her a soft smile. “Still is.”

“Exactly,” Nancy said. “That’s Mike. He’s…he’s like you, Dad. He loves deeply. But…he just has been afraid. Afraid of telling her how he feels, of shaking things up, of causing trouble. You can’t be afraid; if you are, you lose everything. You’re here and you’re safe because you weren’t afraid and you took care of Mom and Holly. Don’t you want to give Mike the chance to feel that too?”

“Michael is only fifteen years old…”

“And you were only nineteen when you met mom. He’s had to grow up faster than you have, though. And he’s smart. Give him a break.” There was a pause. Lucas, Max, Leslie and Dustin sat in the corner, awkwardly dodging anyone’s gaze as the family got through this. Joyce watched fearfully. Jonathan stood behind Nancy supportively, letting her speak. Finally, Murray spoke up.

“Look, I don’t know what kind of fucked up version of Family Ties I just walked into, but there is kind of a threat on our species right now in a lab we’ve narrowed down to Carmel, Indiana, meaning we have to go find Eleven and close this gate for good or we’ll all, you know, DIE. So, if Alex P Keaton over here wouldn’t mind, can you save the corny speech about love for later and can we please move?”

“I’m going,” Mike said, and a roar of an argument erupted among everyone until Joyce shouted.

“Enough! All of you STOP IT or Elsie downstairs will get us evicted!”

“Who’s Elsie? She sounds cool,” Leslie cut in, and after everyone gave her a look and looked back at Joyce, Joyce resumed. 

“We need the kids to stay here.” The kids started protesting, but she cut them off. “Except for Mike…El can speak to him, she can connect with him. It’s smart to bring him with us.”

“If Mike goes, we all go,” Dustin said.

“Michael is staying here,” Ted insisted, until Karen held his arm and looked at him.

“Michael will be safe because…well, why don’t you go with him? I’ll stay here with Holly and make sure she’s safe,” Karen said. He turned to Karen, then to Joyce. Joyce nodded.

“Fine. We need Nancy for her firing range…”

“What?” Karen asked. She turned to Nancy. “You know how to use a GUN?”

“Never mind,” Joyce continued. “Kali knows about Brenner and the lab…”

“Right. And I kill him when we find him.”

“You can’t,” Mke cut in. “Didn’t you hear what I told you? El is the one who has to do it.”

“We had an agreement,” Kali said. Joyce hushed them all and they turned to her.

“We will figure out logistics later. Mike with Ted, Kali with us…”

“I go with Olive.”

“Who the hell is Olive?”

“You haven’t noticed your son’s uncanny resemblance to Olive Oyl?” Kali asked, and Murray groaned. 

“Enough! Can we GO please?”

“Wait – I’m not riding in a car alone with Olive and her dad.” Kali grunted, and turned to look at the others. Her eyes stopped on Steve, looking confused and discombobulated, as though he could hardly believe he was where he was. “That one. With the hair. Pretty to look at, at least.” Steve smiled, running a hand through it.

“Farrah Fawcett products.”

“You’re prettier when you don’t speak,” Kali told him, as Robin stifled a giggle.

“Fine!” Joyce said. “Nancy, Jonathan, in the car. Bring the rifle. Karen, why don’t you take Holly in my room and get some sleep? You guys, Robin, stay here. Try to rest; it’s been a long day. Take turns manning the radio and the phones. See what you can…”

“Holly,” Max said. They all turned to her. “Holly. She may know where they are. When she’s awake, of course Mike…bring your radio. If we hear anything, we’ll radio you, okay?” Mike nodded, and Ted looked uncomfortably at Max.

“You’re not going to corner her and…”

“She’ll be fine, Ted,” Karen said, taking his hand and looking at him with love and admiration none of their kids had seen in her in years. “Just…be careful, okay? I love you.”

“I love you too, Karen.”

“ENOUGH WITH THE LOVE BULLSHIT!” Murray shouted.

“OKAY!” Joyce shouted, and the group that was heading with Joyce and Murray left, leaving a confused group of kids, Karen, Steve and Robin in their wake.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens and the journey continues. Everyone is separated, but on the same mission to close the gate and give Brenner what he deserves.

_Dear Jane,_

_I don’t know how to start this letter, so I’m just going to say that I’m sorry. What I said to you was wrong and unforgivable, and I wouldn’t blame you if you never spoke to me again. I know you don’t owe me your forgiveness, kindness, or understanding, but I had to try because, sometimes, I think you’re the only real friend I’ve got at school. That’s why I’m so embarrassed that I said all those terrible things to you._

_The thing is, I’ve been feeling a little…lost. In general. Lost about the kind of person I am, the people I surround myself with, about the things in my life that I want. Who I want to be, how I want to grow. You know how we were talking about plants, and it is said that they need the right environment to grow well? When you were thinking about your own growth, well, so was I. My parents always told me I had to be a certain way. But I don’t think that’s how I am. And it’s confusing and hard, and it makes me angry, but it’s so hard to talk to anyone about it without sounding like some spoiled rich kid who doesn’t know how lucky he is._

_So, when I met you and Will, it confused me. Because I really like you both. But it’s like…I’m not supposed to, because you guys are different. And not in a bad way. You’re just so real. You don’t try to impress everyone. You don’t try to be the best in the school at everything, and things have just gotten so competitive here that my parents see that as less than what I deserve. It’s stupid. You and Will are MORE than I deserve and I know it. That’s why I get so mad. And sometimes, when I speak…THEY come out. My mom and dad. And I hate it. And I hate that you and Will are the ones that had to deal with me like that._

_You may have heard, but something weird happened to me two nights ago. I was so drunk I really don’t get it, but my parents said the hospital claims I was injected with a drug that knocked me out, but whoever did it planted pills next to me to make it look like I tried to hurt myself. It has to be true. I didn’t take any pills, Jane. Someone tried to make it look like I hurt myself. And now I’m really scared…REALLY scared about who it could be. That’s the main reason, other than apologizing, that I wanted to write to you. I don’t want whoever is after me to come and look for you. Please stay safe. You AND Will. Stay together. You may hate me and I don’t blame you if you do, but please listen and respect it when I say that I think you should be extra careful._

_Anyway…if you do feel like talking to me again, please call me. Or find me at my locker. I hope to talk to you soon. And, again, I’m SO, SO sorry!_

_\- Paul_  
_____________________________________________________________

“It’s been three hours already,” Dustin grumbled, pacing the room. Mrs. Wheeler had gone into Mrs. Byers’ room to get some sleep with Holly, but the others couldn’t relax. They didn’t want to wake Holly up and frighten her in the fear that she would never be able to have a vision, but simply waiting wasn’t cutting it. 

“You’ve got to chill, Henderson,” Robin told him. “They don’t even know exactly where they’re going. That Bauman weirdo just knows the vicinity and you know the place is going to be hidden. It’s not like there will be big, fluorescent signs hanging in the air saying, ‘Evil Government Lab Here’.”

“I like that idea,” Leslie joked. “When I get an apartment one day, I think I’ll put that sign outside.”

“How can you joke right now?” Will asked. “El is gone, everyone is looking aimlessly…”

“They’ll be fine, Byers,” Leslie said, confidently. “Hell, I only just met you people and I can tell. From what you’ve all told me you’ve fought big creepy monsters before, so what’s some old guy in a suit?”

“ _He’s_ a monster,” Lucas said quietly “We’ve seen him. Years ago. He came after all of us in our middle school gym. Had his mob of men come after us with guns, just pointed in our faces. Who does that to kids?”

“A psycho,” Max answered, an angry look crossing her face. “I think about him and I just get so angry. And she’s number eleven. Imagine he hurt ten kids before her.”

“The kind of shit that goes on that nobody knows about is ridiculous,” Robin chimed in. “Imagine if there are other labs, other kids…”

“Doesn’t surprise me, sadly,” Leslie continued, shrugging her shoulders. “I think I’ve met about three people that I’ve liked in my life, and Hopper is one of them. I’m sorry, Will. I guess I’m just joking because I’m trying to lighten the mood. Jane’s a good egg. I just don’t want anything happening to her.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was 4:45 AM. Eleven saw it on the monitor in her room, which Papa kept on. Hop hadn’t moved. 

She thought for a minute of going to him in the void and visiting, but two things stopped her. For one, she didn’t want to strain or upset him any more than he was, and, more importantly, she had something to do.

Mike told her to find her mother. There was no way she could do it later. Papa would surely work her until she was completely exhausted. She would have to do it now.

She closed her eyes and thought about Mike’s broken voice as he found her in the void. She thought about how he desperately told her that she needed to find her mother. 

Faster than she ever had, she found herself in the void. She saw her mother, sleeping peacefully in a rocking chair. Near her on a couch in the room was a big, tough looking woman, fast asleep. That wasn’t her Aunt Becky; who was that? Her Aunt Becky lay on the floor alongside her. But…that was weird. Aunt Becky had her own room. Why was she lying on the floor next to her?

She walked closer to her mom, and almost hated disturbing her. She looked so peaceful. Then she remembered that she would awake to the same vacant, inattentive state she was currently in. 

She reached for her wrist, which was frail, small, and weak in her hand.

“Mama,” she quietly whispered. “It’s…me. It’s Jane. I…I’m in some trouble right now. My boyfriend…he said that I had to see you. I don’t know why. Mama, can you help me?”

Terry’s eyes blinked. She opened them dreamily and looked directly into El’s eyes. As she moved, Becky stirred as well. She quickly got up and looked in the direction where Terry was staring, but didn’t see anything.

“Terry?” She said. She turned to the figure on the couch and shook her. “Alice! Alice, I think it’s working. She’s actually looking at a specific place.” Alice jumped up and hurried over, and looked in the direction of where El was standing and Terry was staring.

“Eleven? Eleven is that you? Can you…can you give us a sign of some kind?” Eleven looked from Becky to this woman, and both seemed to be trustworthy. She reached a hand in the direction of Alice’s open palm and traced Y-E-S. “Good girl, smart girl…listen…I have to tell you something, sweetie. You’re not going to like it but…it’s going to help you…”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Can you go any faster?” Ted turned around and gave a dirty look to Kali, who was sitting in the back seat alongside Steve. The car ride had been quiet and awkward, with most staring out the window in a complete fog. 

“Excuse me, miss, but I don’t think it’ll do us any good getting a speeding ticket and slowing us down more.”

“You won’t get a speeding ticket for going over 20,” Kali said. 

“Chill, speed demon. We have to keep close behind the others,” Steve replied. She gave him a dirty look.

“Didn’t I tell you that you were prettier when you were quiet?”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t really care, so…”

“Don’t start with her, Steve,” Mike warned, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “You won’t win.”

“Welcome to the world of women,” Ted mumbled, looking ahead of him.

“That’s not always true,” Mike said. “I mean, El…she’s….she’s not one to argue, usually.”

“You really love this girl, huh?” Ted asked. A small smile appeared on Mike’s face. His father had never – ever – asked about his feelings for anyone. Did the mere act of punching one guy in the face for his mom soften him?

“Yeah.”

“How sweet,” Kali dryly replied. “After that blatant display of sexism, I’m glad you can all smile and bond that you love the women you think are so irrational.”

“Are you always this much of a riot?” Steve asked, crossing his arms tightly and looking at her with disdain. “You must be the hit of the party wherever you go.”

“I don’t do parties. Too many people, and I’m allergic to most of them.” Steve couldn’t contain his laughter that time, and Mike took a quick glance of them in his rear-view mirror.

Were they flirting?

At a time like this?

As much as a bit of a lighter mood made the car ride less tense, he couldn’t watch anything related to flirting because it just made him think of El and the fact that she wasn’t okay. She said she wasn’t okay. El always played tougher than she actually was; she only said she was hurt when she was desperately hurt to the point that she could barely move. If she wasn’t okay, what was going on? What had that asshole done to her?

“Hey,” Ted's voice woke Mike up, as he turned to see his father glance at him quickly before going back to the road. “She’ll be okay, son. She’ll be okay.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Papa.

El had to kill him.

The only way to seal this gate – to end this world – was to kill Papa. To be the person who had to kill this man who terrified her more than any monster or risk she’s ever faced before.

It didn’t seem right.

“Eleven,” El heard Alice say. “Eleven, are you there? Are you okay?”

El wasn’t sure. 

She drew a question mark in Alice’s hand and thought. It wasn’t her fear that gave her the feeling that something was off. First of all, the realization that this monster – the one who hunted all those people and hurt Will so many times – was a parallel version of her…it made her start to think about this theory. And while, in this parallel world, creatures didn’t have the ability to reason and just behaved like animals, she just felt that this monster seemed smarter than that. It was too strategic. It was too mindful in its approach. If it sincerely wanted Papa dead, it surely could have just done that itself. What was the real thing that it wanted?

She held on to her mother’s wrist. It seemed pointless, but maybe her mom could send her a message – a sign – that she was on the right track.

“Mama…it can’t be right,” she said, her brain reeling. “Papa walked into the Upside Down. He isn’t afraid to die. Just killing him…is that what this monster wants? The other monster – Papa’s other person - died and she’s still angry. I mean, maybe this scientist is wrong. Maybe she doesn’t want him DEAD.”

She stared at her Mama, her vacant eyes gleaming in a way that made it appear as though she had something else, something more important to say. She took El’s hand, and El felt that familiar feeling of falling backwards into a memory…

_“Terry, see reason, will you? This can’t possibly work…”_

_“It’s my daughter!” Terry yelled at a younger Becky, the two of them staring at each other angrily in their old house and fuming. “Why can’t it work for me to take back the little girl who I grew in MY body?”_

_“Because it’s not HER, Terry! I’ve told you! You miscarried, the doctors SAID. Over and over and over again. This is post-traumatic stress and…”_

_“Bullshit!” Terry shouted, getting into Becky’s face. “You are my SISTER. My BLOOD. How can you of all people believe the absolute shitty lies that these people told?”_

_“Because I trust doctors, Terry! I trust them! Why would they lie about your baby dying?”_

_“Because HE has pull, HE has control, and he takes whatever the hell he wants without consequence - without any justice! He took EVERYTHING from me – Andrew, my plans, my baby – and now I’m going to take everything from him! Let him see how it feels to have HIS dreams shattered…”_

El felt herself fly upwards as she returned to the present with a jolt.

Justice…

That was it.

She quickly turned and faced Alice’s palm and wrote N-O.

“No, you can’t kill him? But…that Seamus fellow, he says you must, Jane. It’s the only way to…”

El interrupted and wrote R-O-N-G. She paused, and then wrote J-U-S-T-I-S

“Justi…is….Justice?” Alice asked, looking at Becky in confusion. Then they looked at Terry, who had a tear running down her face.

“Terry!” Becky said, running over to her. Terry barely did anything anymore, let alone cry. What was happening to her?

“What does that mean?” Alice asked. It was too much to explain. El sighed deeply and then wrote in Alice’s palm again.

T-R-U-S-T.... M-E.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Karen awoke with a jolt as she heard a loud scream beside her.

She jumped up in Joyce’s bed to see Holly as she had so frequently seen her lately – awake sweating, screaming, and terrified. 

The pediatrician said this was a phase, especially with a major life change like a sister moving out of the house. He said to just keep reminding her that it wasn’t real, that she was safe, that she was in a place where she was loved and protected.

The pediatrician had no idea that a strange man tried to capture her because of this “phase”. She had hushed this up and shrugged it off too long and too much, despite her instincts telling her Holly was right. There was something more to it. Enough was enough.

Footsteps ran in as the kids in the other room looked panicked, alarmed at the sound of the scream. Holly jumped into Karen’s arms.

“Mommy! Mommy, where are we?”

“We…had to take a drive somewhere,” Karen said.

“Is everything okay?” Max asked. The others lingered in the doorway, not wishing to crowd Holly especially since she had no idea where she was. 

“Max!” Holly said, turning to Max, her eyes gleaming. “Lucas! Mommy, what’s going on?”

“It’s okay,” Max told her, sitting alongside her and Karen on the bed. Lucas joined as well. The others respectfully stood to the side and let them handle it, gradually drifting their way out of the room.

“I had a scary nightmare,” Holly continued. “Jane…that girl…”

“What happened to her?” Karen asked, rubbing her hair gently. Holly looked confused and slightly shocked.

“Y-you believe me?”

“Yes, honey,” Karen said, trying to restrain herself from crying at the sight of her littlest baby hysterically sobbing, and realizing that, for months, she endured these terrifying visions alone. “I believe you, Holly. Please. Tell us what you saw.”

“She…she has no hair,” Holly continued. “They took all her hair off.”

“Shit,” Lucas muttered, and Karen gave him a pointed expression. “I…I mean, darn…”

“She’s talking to a lady. A lady who looks sick. She’s staring. And these other two ladies are there. She says that it’s her Mama.”

“She did it,” Max said. “She found her Mom. It worked. We have to tell Mike!”

“She says they can’t kill someone. Are they going to kill someone, Mommy? What if they’re going to kill someone?”

“Sweetie…what you’re seeing…we have some clues that you…have a special talent. And that what you can see is kind of real,” Karen told her gently. “But, trust me, this isn’t a bad thing. And because you’re so special…because you’re telling us these things…we can figure out what they mean and what to do to help people who need it. Your talent can help us save anyone who may be in trouble, so, with your help, nobody will be hurt.”

“But why does she have no hair?” Holly cried. “I saw someone take it off before. Why do they need her hair?”

“Jane had a…sort of dad…that wasn’t nice to her,” Max explained. “He hurt her. And she escaped him, but he found a way to get her back. And that’s why you guys are here. Everyone is going to help to get her back so she can be safe and okay again.”

“Did you see anything else?” Karen asked. “Don’t be afraid, sweetie. You have all of us here with you.”

“No, Mommy,” Holly said, wiping away tears. “I just…Mikey loves her. And he’s going to be so sad, because she looks sad. And she looks sick and hurt. She needs help, Mommy!” Karen held her closely, rubbing her back, letting her sob gently into her chest.

“Max, honey, you’d better radio Michael and let him know,” Karen told her. “And…tell him that, what his dad said…it’s not happening. We’ll never forbid him from seeing her OR Will. Not after all this.”

“But…isn’t your husband…”

“Yes, he’s there,” Karen said. “And he’s stepping it up majorly today and winning lots of brownie points. But he won’t win this argument. You guys – all of you – you have each other and there’s nothing more special than having people to care about, people you’d do anything for. Never give that up, okay? I want to see you kids visiting Michael and Jane…El…when you’re old married bores like Ted and I are, got it?” Max and Lucas exchanged touched but surprised looks, and gave Karen a nod. “Now go ahead…any information they can get is helpful.”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“What have you been doing, Eleven?”

El gazed unblinkingly at Papa, who challenged her. She suspected this may happen; that the wires donning her head may have hinted to him that she used her powers. But he had no way of seeing what was in her head. No way of knowing if she was telling the truth or not.

So she just looked at him.

“Remember what I said,” Brenner persisted, looking in her face. “Chief Hopper’s life rests on your cooperation. You will not be a rebellious teenager here or it will cost you the life of every person you care about. Chief Hopper first. Then the Wheeler boy…”

The lights went out in a flash. El forced herself to exercise great restraint in thrusting Papa across the room and slamming him into a wall, which is precisely what her instincts told her to do, because she knew that, if she did, Hop would be dead and he wouldn’t care. Instead, she settled for destroying the circuit powering this room.

“Obviously, you need a reminder that these aren’t empty threats,” Papa continued. He nodded to one of the guards he brought in, who wheeled her into a second room, with power working and a monitor on. He mumbled into a radio, giving instructions to someone. El’s heart beat rapidly. She begged that he would spare Hop’s life…

“Look into the monitor, Eleven,” he told her. “Look. If you close your eyes, it will be worse.” El looked to see Hopper on the ground, being administered painful electrical shocks that sent him into convulsions and caused him to shout in pain. His entire body shook. She tried to stop the tears; her eyes got wet, but she would show control. Papa hated tears. He hated weakness. She would be strong.

“There are enough volts of electricity in that machine to render Chief Hopper completely braindead, so, if I were you, I’d drop the attitude and answer. As a reminder, you are hooked to enough wires that can detect your brain activity and make it very plain to me if you are lying. You clearly used your powers. What did you do?”

Lying was no use. She would just have to be selective about the details.

“Went to see Mama,” she answered, not even looking at him. He knelt down and got directly into her face.

“What were you seeing her for?”

“To see if she was okay,” El answered. This wasn’t entirely a lie. She often wondered if her mother was okay, and being given the instruction to see her – now that she knew that it was safe and her Aunt Becky couldn’t hate her for stealing her money years before – gave her an odd sense of comfort.

“And…why would you think of seeing her now? What are you hoping to get out of seeing her?”

“She’s my mother,” El said calmly, evenly, and without the defiant tone she wished she could convey. “I want to see my mother.”

The two stared at each other, as though challenging each other, and, after a moment, he backed away.

“You understand, Eleven, that your brain activity is monitored by these very sensitive machines. I will know when there is a change to your brain waves and vital signs. I will know when you are using them at all times. You are not to use them when I’ve told you to sleep. Not to see your mother, not to see anyone. If you do, I will not hesitate to make Chief Hopper or any of your friends accountable for your error in judgment. Do we understand each other?”

El nodded, inwardly panicking. If she couldn’t ever use her powers, when would she try to reach Mike? How would she be able to communicate with him; to let him know that she was okay?

“Good. And now, I’m afraid it may be a bit of an exertion, but you are going to have to train whether you are tired right now or not. And I expect the very best that you can give.” Guards on either side of her undid her restraints and escorted her, one burly body on either side, behind Papa and down a dark corridor. 

She knew exactly what she had to do, but it was just a matter of doing it. Mike said that they were going to try to find Holly and save her, and, if they did, it would only be a matter of time before they found out where she was. Or, at the very least, between everyone together, between Joyce and Murray and everyone involved, they were sure to get close. With everyone there, she could stand a chance, but she definitely couldn’t do it alone.

If she had to, though – if days passed and nobody came – she would do it alone. It would probably take every last bit out of her, but she would.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Mike, this is Max. Mike, do you copy?”

Mike quickly grabbed the radio, his heart leaping to his throat, hoping beyond anything that Holly had awoken and given them a location. Murray led all the cars close to Carmel, and, from there, he had only a vague idea regarding possible locations where the lab could be. There were a few different options. This would save them a wild goose chase.

“Max? Max, I copy, what’s up?”

“Update from Holly – El made it to her mother. She saw her there. She said she was talking to her mom and there were two other women there. One had to have been Alice.”

“Good!” Mike said, excited, and turned to the others. Ted was glad that Mike got some good news, as was Steve, but Kali rolled her eyes.

“What does that even mean? Do we know if it went well? Do we know if she’s okay?”

“What?” Max asked.

“Nothing, just the killjoy,” Steve interrupted. Mike shushed them and looked to the radio. 

“Did she pick up anything else? Where she could be? Is she okay?”

“The…only thing she said is that her hair was gone. And that she looked sick. I'm...I'm so sorry, Mike. We'll get her though. It'll be okay.” Mike felt himself go numb with pain for El; he knew what her hair meant to her, and, while he fell in love with her seconds after seeing her without any on her head, it must have broken her heart to have to endure the debilitating experience of having a feature of hers she loved so deeply ripped away from her. Worse yet, she looked sick. What if she was? She said that overexerting herself hurt her chest. What if it hurt? What if he was going to overexert her to the point that it could cause irreparable damage to her body? 

He begged the tears to stop, but they wouldn’t.

“Hey,” Steve said, leaning forward and patting Mike on the shoulder. “Hey, no, no, Mike, she’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that,” Kali cut in.

“Hey, I think we’ve all had enough of your shit,” Steve cut in, giving her a defiant look. “You want to walk around with a cloak of misery draped over your soul, be my guest, but it’s not helping anyone, okay?”

“Alright, everyone calm down," Ted cut in. “Mike, you still have that girl on the line?”

“I’m here,” Max said, as Kali and Steve exchanged a scowl.

“Unfortunately she doesn’t seem to know where she is, and she’s just a kid, so it’s not like she’d even be able to tell you if she could get a better view.”

“Th-that’s okay Max,” Mike said, his voice trembling with emotion. “Don’t push her too far. Whatever she can tell us is great...makes us closer to her than before.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________

“Do it again.”

El looked in exhaustion at the huge pile of soda cans, individually filed before her. As part of her training exercises, Papa was asking her to crush as many as she possibly could one after the other. At first, given how easy it was to picture Mike distraught and upset, she was able to do it pretty quickly. However, it was starting to hurt. Blood dripping down her nose and that sharp pain in her chest that she got from complete overexertion were beginning to weigh on her.

She also fell into and out of spells of dizziness. There were a few times where she could barely feel her legs under her. But she forced herself to stay steady and strong. If she fell, if she showed weakness, if she lacked strength, Papa could punish Hop. 

She concentrated on the can and thought of that image of Mike; how it could be real if she didn’t cooperate…

The cans started getting blurry.

“Focus on the object, Eleven.”

He had no idea.

Focusing on the object was the wrong method. She focused on the object for the last year and it did nothing; it was only when Kali said to focus on the fear that she was able to work her powers again. But, even in ideal circumstances, she could only use her powers when she was strong enough. She was starting to get weak. The one row of cans before her looked like three as it faded into and out of vision.

She heard the loud, thundering beating of her heart. Sometimes when she tried to use her power, she felt this before. Not like a typical phase of anxiety, but a threatening pounding that caused her deep physical pain.

She heard Papa call something, but she couldn’t make it out. She decided to give herself another pep talk…

_“Come on…if you don’t, Hop could die.”_

The cans weren’t even visible. Now it was colors and loud thumping.

_“You don’t want him to die, do you?”_

More thumping…

She felt her breath get short and heavy. She tried to stand, but lost control of her body and fell backwards.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

“Are you sure you know where to go?” Joyce asked, trying to peek at the map through her peripheral vision and failing.

“Have I not been researching for the last few years?” Murray asked. “The source of the blackouts was always in this three-block vicinity. I have scouted every building on there and almost all are accounted for except for one. It’s apparently an abandoned medical building that has had a For-Rent sign above it for months. I called the number to ask about it and they said it’s been purchased.”

“So maybe it has,” Joyce continued. Murray laughed.

“That was six months ago.”

“Well…sales take time…”

“Or it’s being used for other purposes. And a medical building, of all things? One equipped for a field of science in some way? It works perfectly.” Joyce turned the corner, knowing they were about ten mintues away, feeling her heart beat rapidly. She felt so awful that she was entrusted to take care of El, and here they were, looking for her, knowing that the man who they all promised she’d be safe and far away from had somehow managed to capture her again. She was doing so well; adjusting to normal life and finally starting to feel happy again. Why couldn’t this poor girl be happy?”

“Just a few blocks in and…there!” Murray pointed down a long stretch of businesses, where it was still fairly dark since it was only about 6 AM at this point. 

Lights were blinking.

This was it.

It had to be.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“What happened?” Dr. Brenner stood over Eleven, lying in her bed and hooked up to an IV and several machines, asking one of his staff of doctors, Dr. Flora Sienna, to examine her. She had gotten dizzy before, but he had no idea that her powers were so terribly disabled that he had to factor in the possibility of her reaching a state of unconsciousness.

“The use of her powers is causing great strain on the blood flow to her brain,” the doctor explained. “You say she has nose bleeds?”

“She always has.”

“That’s a sign of this overexertion. Such a thing could put a strain on her entire circulatory system; it is causing the blood to flow in a way that’s unnatural and straining.”

“Overexertion,” Dr. Brenner muttered to himself, as though the idea was thoroughly preposterous. “How did we get to this place? She used to do things like this all the time.”

“In dribs and drabs, from your notes. Never like this. In the last hour, she was asked to crush…how many cans did she just crush?”

“Seventeen,” Dr. Brenner said. “But she requires training. She has not utilized her powers in months. I must insist that I rewire her so that we can monitor her brain activity.”

“You can’t do that much again unless you want to kill her,” Dr. Sienna asserted, looking at Dr. Brenner with judgment in her eyes. “Do you WANT to kill her?”

“Dr. Sienna,” Dr. Brenner said, cooly and evenly. “I have hired you because you’ve been rated one of the best doctors in Indiana, if not the country. I have hired you to do important work to protect these children who are vital to our country…” at this, Dr. Sienna laughed, but stopped when she saw his sinister glare. “I apologize…was something funny?”

“Just the idea of you saying you’re here to protect these children,” Dr. Sienna argued. “I mean…it’s downright laughable.” At this, Dr. Brenner got very close – practically in her face – and stared her down with such ferocity that she started taking a step back.

“You will mind your tongue with me,” he said. “I suppose you think you’re more morally sound because this is just a paycheck to you and not your life’s passion. A reminder that I can certainly take that paycheck away at any given moment.”

“On the contrary, caring for patients IS my life's passion. CARING for them, not using them and tossing them aside. And you won’t find a doctor as good as I am,” Dr. Sienna retorted. Dr. Brenner sighed; he knew that was true. She was the best, and El was the most unusual patient anyone could have. He needed her and it was useless to pretend he didn’t. 

“Be that as it may, you are here to do a job and I am here to do mine. The federal government funds this; it is not my doing alone.”

Dr. Sienna sighed and turned to Eleven’s chart. 

“She’s stable now. Her vitals are returning to normal, and that’s only because she stopped when she did. If you want to assure yourself of the health and longevity of this patient, you can’t urge her to continue when she is starting to feel physical strain. She must stop. And food, perhaps, will help, as opposed to the feeding tube you've had her on for the last day.” Dr. Brenner made a low grunt sound, and Dr. Sienna restrained herself with great strength from rolling her eyes. “Will there be anything else, Dr. Brenner?”

“No.” With that, Dr. Sienna quickly walked out of the room, and Dr. Brenner examined Eleven.

She was pale. She was breathing weakly. What had these people done to her? She was so powerful. 

He knelt down beside her, and, feeling as though she could understand, started to speak.

“You will be strong again,” he said. “And, when you are, you will do amazing things for your country. Like you were born and bred to do. Let go of this sentimental nonsense; the world out there is no better than it is in here, trust me.”

With that, he stood up, gave her one last look, and quit the room himself.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Hey, guys, a note!” Dustin’s voice started everyone into a wake. Leslie, Max, Robin, Will, and Lucas all seemed to dart up at once as soon as Dustin noticed a slip of paper slide under the front door.

“Don’t open it!” Max called out. “It could be a trap; they could know who we are and someone could be following us.”

“A trap?” Lucas asked. “What are they hiding in a letter, a bomb?”

“You dinguses are both ridiculous,” Robin insisted, walking over to it. “It’s just a letter.”

“Stop,” Leslie cut her off. “Max has a point. How do we know there aren’t people behind the door or something?”

“I’ll get it,” Will offered. “I’m…I’m sure it’s fine.” They quietly and nervously watched as Will walked toward the letter that was slipped under his door. His hand reached out slowly, nervously, and then quickly reached for it.

Safe.

Nothing happened.

Everyone seemed to sigh at once as Will started reading what was inside the letter. 

It was a letter to El…he didn’t recognize the handwriting, though.

Then he kept going…it was very clear who this was from.

“What is it?” Max asked, looking at him curiously. 

Will felt a lump rise in his throat. He realized that he didn’t tell his other friends about Paul, or the fact that he had romantic feelings for him. How would they take that at a time like this?

More pressing, the letter was important. Paul didn’t try to kill himself. He was injected. Set up. Used to trap El all along.

“It’s a letter from Paul,” Will answered. 

“Who’s Paul?” Lucas asked. 

“Who’s Paul? He’s only Will’s…” Leslie stopped herself before continuing, realizing she was about to announce FOR Will that he was gay and that was the last thing she wanted to do. “…friend.”

“Okay, weirdest way of describing someone ever,” Dustin mumbled.

“He’s the one who tried to kill himself and got El to the hospital in the first place,” Will told them. “Only…this letter is saying that he didn’t. That the whole thing was a set up.”

“What?” Lucas asked, and they all came to surround Will and the letter, which he put quickly away.

“Come on, Will!” Dustin cut off.

“Let us see!” Lucas added.

“No, just…forget it, okay?”

“Will, what’s your problem?” Max asked. “How can we help everyone if we don’t know…”

“It’s because of me!” Will exclaimed, the hurt and exhaustion of the last couple of days finally pouring out of him. “El was taken because of me. Paul was mad because of me. I LIKE Paul, okay? As in…you know, LIKE. Like you like Max, Lucas. There. I said it. You satisfied?” He took his letter and ran to his room, where everyone was staring in shock.

“Ohhh…it’s NOT Steve, then!” Robin said.

“Wow,” Dustin said quietly. “That was…something…”

“He’s been terrified to tell you,” Leslie volunteered. “Especially now that he’s blaming himself for the whole thing.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Max cut in. “What does Will’s sexual orientation have to do with what’s happening to El?”

“Paul is a closeted bully, that’s what,” Leslie said. “Now that I know he was set up and didn’t actually try to harm himself, I can say that. I kind of called him on the fact that he liked Will back and he freaked out and logically decided to verbally abuse El for not dumping Mike to be his cover up girlfriend. She cursed him out and because she has a huge heart she felt responsible when she thought he tried to kill himself.”

“Well, he shouldn’t try to harm himself…but like you said, now that we know he didn’t, her cursing him out is his fault,” Max answered. “Nobody told him to be an asshole.”

“Yes, exactly!” Leslie said.

“Hold on, guys, wait,” Lucas interrupted. “I know that this is all…you know, very big and stuff and I don’t mean to make light of it, but this was a plant. Someone got Paul to the hospital to get El there. This whole thing was planned.”

“How did we not see that?” Dustin asked, looking from one to the other. “It’s so damn obvious. What, Brenner’s men just happened to be in a hospital where El was taken?”

“They could have followed her around,” Robin suggested.

“Well, if I know the Richards – and, I’m a pretty good stalker, so I do– they’re going to find out who did this. They have more money and resources than anyone. And there’s no way they’re not going to tell people.”

“The federal government protects this asshole,” Lucas stressed. “They can’t beat that.”

“Oh, Brad Richards has ties of his own,” Leslie continued. “He’s a big shot attorney and many of his clients are ALSO government. They go way back to the Ivy League schools where they probably got drunk, made out and owe each other favors in exchange for their silence. I think, maybe, we should find out who their detective is and find a way of letting him know what's been happening without saying too much."

“Not a bad idea,” Max cut in.

“In a minute, guys,” Dustin interrupted. “I mean, you guys can. Lucas…I mean, Will…I think we should talk to him.”

“Right,” Lucas said. The two of them walked into Will’s room, followed by Max. They knocked, and he didn’t answer.

“Will, we’re coming in,” Dustin told him. “I’m going to count to three. If you really don’t want us to, just say no. One. Two. Three.” Dustin opened the door to see Will sitting on his bed, turned away from them. Dustin sat on one side of him and Max and Lucas sat on the other. They all sat there quietly for a moment, not sure of where to begin.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Dustin asked. Will shrugged.

“I was afraid you’d hate me.”

“Because of THAT?” Max asked. “Don’t you know we’d never judge you for that?”

“It doesn’t change a thing,” Lucas assured him. “You’re still Will. Just like you always were.” Will looked up, from one to the other.

“Really?”

“Of course,” Dustin said. “Party membership is for life, right?” Will smiled at him, wiping a tear away.

“For life.”  
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Alice and Becky sat down to coffee the next day, trying to decipher the meaning of “Justice”. Alice had no idea what could be better justice than killing the man who robbed El of her entire life. They tried to get Terry to say something, since she was more responsive to stimuli the day before than she ever was, but to no avail.

“I don’t understand,” Alice thought. “I’d like nothing myself more than to hear that the bastard who ruined my family’s life is long gone. What’s better justice than that?”

“Well, I’m thinking of the whole notion of giving a person what they have given you. What, would she make him have powers? Can you do that?”

“She said it had to be worse than death,” Alice continued. “So…I don’t know, what could be worse than death?”

“For a man like Brenner…I don’t know, obscurity? Failure?”

“Doesn’t seem like justice to me,” Alice mumbled, sipping her coffee. The two of them continued to ponder this when there was a loud bang in the living room. Becky stood up and ran over to the room to see glass shattered everywhere. In the center of the room was a rock with a note attached to it. Becky fearfully went over to it and reached for the notice.

“Do not speak to her again,” Becky read. She turned to Alice. “What the hell…”

But the question was never finished, as, in the next second, a series of gunshots fired and one hit Becky square in the chest. She fell to the floor in a heap. 

Alice screamed in sheer terror, and took cover behind a piece of furniture as the door loudly opened. She wondered about Terry and hurried into the room where she was sitting. In the shadows as a team of Brenner’s men stormed the house looking for them. They couldn’t hide for too long; they burst into the TV room where Terry was watching game shows again and faced their guns in Alice’s direction.

“Listen – listen, stop. She’s of no danger to you, she…” A gun fired and hit her in the arm. The pain radiated through her so deeply that she didn’t even feel herself fall toward the ground, knocking over one of the shooters in front of her, who aimed to get Terry directly in the head, but narrowly missed and got her shoulder instead. With everyone wounded and neighbors starting to come over to see what the noise was, Brenner’s men hurried out the back door and ran out of sight.

“Terry?” Alice called, looking at her. She was losing a lot of blood; There’s no way that Becky survived; the shot hit her head on. Alice would be okay, as the shot was painful, but only grazed her arm. Terry looked awful; she needed to get to a hospital.

“HELP!” Alice called loudly. “Somebody help us, please!”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In the midst of her deep sleep, El saw it.

Her Aunt Becky was probably dead.

Her mother was lying on the floor, in a puddle of blood. She was shot. Papa had sent men over to kill them just to stop her from ever trying to reach them again. He knew that El had lied. He said if she lied there would be consequences. Those were the consequences. He tried to kill her mother, and he may have very well succeeded.

She was tired, unconscious, exhausted, and completely wiped out, but an anger swept over her that, even in her sleep, emitted stronger power than she had produced in months.

The electricity went wild; lights flickering from extremely bright to popping out. El, still asleep, was unaware that, at that moment, Brenner and his team came running in to restrain her only to see that she managed to use her powers while completely asleep. With a crack, all of the lights went out. In a few seconds, they came back.

Brenner gazed at her, bewildered. She lost strength crushing cans but just completely blew the circuit of this building?

What story could the authorities give this time when the neighbors once again complained about the unusual blackout? It was starting to raise eyebrows as his experimentation with other subjects with a mere fraction of El’s powers impacted the power. Others were starting to notice.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Murray, Joyce, Nancy, Jonathan, Mike, Ted, Kali and Steve all parked their cars several blocks away from the source Murray located and convened on the corner.

“Did you see that?” Murray asked them quietly. “The flickering back there - the blackout that came after. That old medical building; that HAS to be it.”

“Are you sure?” Nancy asked. “I mean…what if it’s not? What if we just walk into an abandoned building?”

“Then the boogie man will get us and we’ll all die,” Murray replied, rolling his eyes. “This isn’t guesswork, people. I do my research. You know I do my research.”

“Okay, well, fine, so, what, we just run in there and attack, or what?” Steve asked. They all turned to him wordlessly.

“Is that a serious question?” Nancy asked.

“Obviously, we don’t run in there like maniacs,” Joyce replied. “We need to have some kind of a plan. I also don’t think it’s best for all of us to go running in there at once. We’ll need backup.”

“I’m going in,” Mike said. Ted turned to him.

“Michael, you can’t be serious.”

“You were about to take on the Demogorgon with a candlestick, Mike,” Nancy reminded him. He rolled his eyes, feeling his fear, anger, and fury get to him.

“If El is in there I can help to get her out.”

“He can,” Kali continued. “In fact, I’m sure any of you living with her know that it’s her desire to protect Mike that has her powers working in the first place.”

“That’s the next thing – the powers,” Murray started. “So what’s the plan? The gate has to be closed, we understand. He has to die…”

“El has to do it,” Mike insisted.

“She gave me her word that I could do it.”

“Well, technically, if she sets him up and this…make up girl does it…isn’t that kind of like she also did it? She was an enabler and she let him die, so she killed him,” Jonathan suggested. The group thought about this. Mike seemed unsure.

“I don’t know…”

“Or what if I made him THINK that she was doing it?” Kali asked. “I can make people see whatever they want to see.”

“Humans,” Mike cut in, doubtful. “How do you know if your powers work on the mind flayer?”

“I don’t, but it’s worth trying.”

“Is it?” Mike asked, feeling himself get angry. “Because if it doesn’t work and the gate stays open it’s not like she can bring him back to life and kill him a second time. Then we’re all screwed.”

“I think the safest way,” Joyce cut in, evenly and calmly, “Is for the two of you to do it together. That way El fulfilled her part of the bargain and the task is done, so the gate will be closed.” They turned to Kali, who nodded.

“Okay.”

“Okay? We don’t even have a plan!” Steve called out. “We’re just going to walk in there and Kali’s going to grab El and kill him?”

“Of course not,” Kali told him. “But, remember, I can make people see whatever I want. So I have an idea…”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is justice? Read this chapter and see...

_11/29/86_

_Dear Dr. Miller,_

_As per your phone call yesterday, I felt it urgent to get back to you as soon as possible, but you were not available during the holiday weekend. That said, I am forwarding this fax to you in hopes that it will reach you soon._

_Thank you very much for filling me in on the mystery that took place in your hospital in Illinois. Rest assured that your instincts were correct. The child taken is, in fact, involved in the government-funded research on cognition in its relation to human capacity for multidimensional exploration. One of the patients at your hospital, Mr. Paul Richards, was drugged in an attempt to lure the subject, Miss Jane Hopper, to the hospital and forcibly remove her from her home. This completely echoes our mutual reservations with this work._

_As you have expressed to me before, there are many ethical concerns risen with this research. I am writing to agree whole-heartedly. When I was hired for this job, it was openly stated that there would be ethical concerns, but that the benefits that the research would have on mankind and our progress would far outweigh any costs or psychological damage that would befall upon patients. I must say, I was completely misled. It was bad enough in the last few years to see Dr. Brenner push incapable children beyond their limits to move objects or hurt innocent animals. However, in his most recent conquest, Dr. Brenner has taken a girl prisoner against her will and pushed her into a state of high cardiac stress. He is endangering her life, and my instincts see that this is more for spite or vengeance that this child abandoned him in their earlier training than for any true benefit to our country’s scientific advancement. This girl was born and bred in his lab, void of love, affection, or a healthy, nurturing environment, has sought such things, secretly attained them, and has now been taking away from them. Not only is Dr. Brenner highly unprofessional and unethical, but he is currently making minimal progress to show that any of these abusive practices are worth the high level of damage that they cause. All of his hypotheses have been invalidated or have yielded insignificant results. None of his findings have advanced our progress, and, further, his initiative has led the Russians to compete in the task of discovering a universe that seems to be more harmful to the human race than good._

_While I know that you are in the same difficult and uncomfortable position as I am, and you were led into a job thinking that you were serving your country only to discover that you are enabling the abuse that these children must endure, I also know that two voices are more powerful than one. I plan to speak with my supervisor and I hope that you speak with yours. If there are no changes, collectively, there must be something that can be done. Anyone who is doing insufficient work should not be allowed to be in a position of power, particularly one that threatens the emotional, physical, and mental health of young children. I made an oath to serve my patients years ago and I plan to keep it. I hope you may consider joining me._

_Please consider my proposal. I look forward to hearing from you._

_Sincerely,_

_Dr. Flora Sienna_

Dr. Mark Kersten was full of anxiety. Again.

Dr. Sienna confided in him that she, like so many others in the hospital, had enough. Dr. Brenner was a quack and they all knew it. Ever since the attack on him three years back by that interdimensional creature, something was…off. He was always cold and calculating, and his focus was always on his work and only that. He passed up on formalities like weddings and funerals and anything that any ethical co-worker would feel obligated to attend because he felt above it all.

But that wasn’t…frightening.

Lately, Dr. Brenner was frightening. He was starting to make the people in the lab uncomfortable. He was asking them to do things to children that they would never in a million years do otherwise, but their hands were tied. This was their job; their livelihood. To work as scientists in the most prestigious and highly demanded government operation in existence was an opportunity that anyone in his field would cut off a limb to have. When they started, they were experimenting with adults. Willing adults who signed waivers and had some idea of what they were getting into. The drugs were tested as safe. These people got to go home at the end of the day.

But the children…now it was always children. And, yes, his most recent subjects did get to go home because he found them highly unremarkable. He hadn’t decided to keep anyone in the lab for good…not since he lost the Ives girl.

That’s what everyone in the hospital called her. Calling her Eleven seemed off; dehumanizing. They did it in his presence, but they would refer to her as Ives in hushed tones knowing well that this child was taken. Taken from her mother, taken from a normal life, taken far away from any healthy way of growing. There was no saying that, though. Things happened to people who threatened to do something; to go to the press and to report what was happening in this lab. The last person who did that was Lydia Bernstein, a young lab employee who cried after she witnessed her peers administering shocks to 10-year-old Kali, and who screamed that this would stop and she would do what was right. She was found dead in her apartment the next day.

Because nobody said no to Dr. Brenner. He got what he wanted.

Then Dr. Sienna came in. She was unlike Lydia. She wasn’t loud and she wasn’t secretive in her intentions to turn against the lab. She came right out and told Dr. Brenner what she thought, and he couldn’t do anything, because he knew she was the best doctor available to treat the Ives girl. And, after the Hell she endured, she needed treatment.

He wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He went home to his two teenage sons after a day of work and felt immensely ashamed of himself. Sometimes, he followed orders without thinking much about it. Because he had seen that this girl WAS dangerous. She had killed before. Killed lab employees just like him for following orders. So, sometimes, in fear, he got a little rougher. And then he’d look into her eyes. Those innocent, sad eyes and realize – no. This was wrong. She wasn’t a monster; she was a child, and she was being transformed into a monster by the biggest one of all. And he was helping.

Still, he tried his best to only get involved when asked. He tried his best to treat her with decency if he could; if there was ever an opportunity for him to. He just tried to keep things smooth. Predictable. Routine.

Which was why it terrified him to see her here. 

Staring at him.

He’d seen that look in her eyes before. She narrowed her eyes in concentration when she was about to hurt someone. Before she broke a colleague’s neck or thrust them against a wall. That was when she was smaller; weaker. Now she was fully grown, and who knew what she could do to him.

He was alone.

He picked up his radio walkie.

“Dr. Kersten to main, I need backup. The patient has escaped her room.”

She continued to stare at him and he felt his heart beat rapidly. 

“Nurse Hall here, which patient?”

“Patient Eleven,” he said, looking at her advance toward him. There was a siren that went off and his heart nearly jumped into his throat as he heard footsteps running toward him and watched as she ran down the corridor in the other direction. In a few seconds a team of armed employees came in.

“Where is she?” they asked. He pointed, fearfully and wordlessly, to the direction of the corridor where he had seen her run, and followed them, Dr. Brenner in the rear.

“How did she get out, Kersten?” Dr. Brenner asked. “Wasn’t it your job to man her room?”

“It’s…locked sir,” Dr. Kersten said. “I…I don’t know…”

The appearance of her in an empty room sent them all running. She was hidden behind furniture, and they all neared closer, Brenner taking the front.

“Remember what I said, Eleven,” Dr. Brenner started. “The people that you love will pay for your choices. Pity that your Chief will have to lose his life because…”

The sentence was interrupted by a giant slam of the door.

They all turned to see it shut, the lock on the outside firmly set in place. They were trapped.

“Dr. Brenner, what’s going on?” asked one of the employees. “She’s…she’s not here. But we all saw her! How could we…”

Dr. Brenner’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the door. He didn’t think it possible, but he knew exactly what it was.

“Eight.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Disguised in scrubs she got from making a nurse’s locker appear to be where Kali was, Kali slammed and locked the door behind her and ran before any other backup could be called. They had scouted the area, however, and the morning after Thanksgiving was a quiet one in the lab. There were only two nurses at the desk and one pediatric doctor on duty who were not presently locked in the cell with Dr. Brenner and his employees.

She grabbed her radio quickly.

“They’re all trapped. Now to take care of the nurses.”

“Hurry!” came Olive’s voice from the other end, and, as cold as jaded as Kali had become, she felt herself feel bad for him. He really could barely breathe without Jane.

It had been about four years since she lost Christian. She had never known love like him in her life. She was 17; he was 20. He took her in when she had no place to go and he truly cared for her. He told her she was beautiful. He told her that nobody would ever hurt her as long as he was around.

He was right…

As long as he was around.

The problem was, he wasn’t. Because Papa sent his men to pound enough bullets into him to leave his remains barely recognizable before trying to take her again. She made them see bullets in her own form so that they couldn’t see the REAL her, running, tears streaming down her face and her heart shattered. It never healed. They took the only love she knew in her life from her and she would never allow herself to feel anything like that again.

She heard the love in Olive’s voice. The way it shook at the thought of Jane being hurt and alone. The way that his entire state of being was fully dependent upon how well she was. And it killed her, because if anything happened to either of them, it would destroy the other. She knew that pain. It was something she wouldn’t even wish on her worst enemy.

Still, she had to give them a chance. They knew what to do to stop this once and for all and they had to do it.

Kali went to the main office. She narrowed her head and looked in the direction of the nurses as she made him appear…

“Ladies, with the patients all tired, I think we’re going to close early today. We have the other staff on duty and Dr. Sienna here. Please go home and enjoy the rest of your weekend with your families.” The two nurses at the desk exchanged surprised looks.

“Dr. Brenner, we never leave the nurse’s station unattended,” one said. “Ever. I mean, suppose…”

“Everything is accounted for. She is under lock and key for the time being and that’s all that we need. Please…go.”

Without needing another excuse, the ladies wished the fake Brenner a farewell and Kali wiped blood from her nose, as another doctor tapped her on the back.

She turned with a jolt.

The doctor had a kind, soft look in her dark brown eyes. She was generally soft; small, plump, her face warm and completely unfitting for a place like this. Kali had never seen anything like it before.

“What are you doing?” the doctor asked. Kali was about to produce another vision when the doctor continued. “You’re the 8th patient aren’t you? I’ve read about you in his research.”

Kali reached for the pistol in her pocket when the doctor placed a gentle hand on her arm.

“I’m not with him,” she whispered. “I was hired by the government but…I’m not…”

“I’ve heard it before,” Kali said, feeling anger fill her entire body. “Heard it before when people were begging for their lives spared. They did what they were told. They didn’t mean to…”

“Well, did you mean to hurt those people you did while Dr. Brenner was experimenting with you?” the doctor asked, raising her eyebrows and making Kali think.

No.

She hurt lots of people. When she was way too young to understand what she was doing.

But she didn’t want to.

She had to.

“No.”

“And neither do we. We may look like free thinking adults but we have things trapping us too. The threat of death or seeing our families hurt hanging over our heads as well. We’re all trapped here.” Kali stared at her, her hand still on her pistol, but not raising it. “This is what’s going to happen. You are going to have shown me a vision of Dr. Brenner telling me to go home. I will go home. Whatever happens after that…well, it’s Dr. Brenner’s own fault for producing an army of kids who have the power to trick our senses, isn’t it?” She started walking closer to Kali, reaching in her pocket and taking out her card. “But this…this is my personal number. If she needs help later. I will give it; I made an oath to serve my patients and I will. Good luck.” 

Kali, jaded and hurt from a life of people who betrayed her trust, found it in her to believe this doctor. She watched as she slowly left the room, placing the card in her pocket and remembering to remind herself it was there.

The door closed.

The lab was empty except for the team of workers trapped in the cell downstairs.

“All clear.”  
_________________________________________________________________________________

Will waited impatiently as the phone to Paul Richard’s house rang in his ear. Once. Twice. Three times…

A click.

“Hello?”

Thankfully, it was Paul’s voice.

“Paul? Paul, it’s Will.”

There was a pause on the other end. Neither knew what to say.

“Will, look, I’m sorry…”

“It’s…it’s not important right now,” Will continued. “Your note that was left for Jane…I’m sorry, but I had to read it. She’s missing, Paul.”

“W-what do you mean, she’s missing?” Paul asked. “Did she…oh, God, she didn’t blame herself for…”

“She did, but that’s not your fault, either,” Will continued. “You were a plant in that hospital. I know your parents have hired an investigator to find out who could have possibly done this to you, but we know. We know.”

“Who then? Who is it? What, they want Jane?”

Will sighed, and looked at Leslie and Max, who sat to help him with moral support through this phone call while the others manned the radio inside and kept Holly and Mrs. Wheeler company.

“Leslie…she had some idea that your dad had some important government connections. Is that true?” There was a long pause and Paul sighed, worriedly.

“I…I can’t talk about this on the phone, Will. It’s…”

“Alright, then I need you to come over,” Will told him. “There are some things we need to tell you.”

“Mike said not to,” Max cut in. “It could be dangerous.”

“It already is!” Will insisted. “He’s one person, Max. He’s not going to tell everyone, and, you know what? Maybe he should. Maybe the world should know the kind of fucked up things our government is doing.”

“Will?” came Paul’s voice from the other line. “Will, what are you talking about?”

“Just…come over.”

“I’m on lock and key,” Paul explained. “My parents are terrified I’m going to be drugged again. I snuck out at 4 AM to deliver that letter this morning. That was the only way I was getting to you.”

“What about a false lead?” Leslie asked. “I’ll call and say I think I heard something about…about Tony. It’s what he deserves, after all. That way they’ll be distracted and you can come over here.” 

“Did you hear that, Paul?” Will asked.

“Yes,” Paul said. “Leslie’s idea could work. Have her call.”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Nancy, Jonathan, and Ted each stayed outside to man the cars and to be ready to drive them if the group had to run out. In Ted’s case, it was with great reluctance. He fought tooth and nail about Mike going in without him, but the idea that he would certainly be needed to drive them away changed his mind (especially since he wasn’t about to let that big haired kid or the nasty girl with the makeup drive his car).

Kali led the others in, and they started looking behind the desk for paperwork and room numbers, hearing a loud banging from downstairs as the prisoners in the locked cell were attempting to get out.

“Here,” Joyce said, finding a paper. “Confidential file. It has 011 on it.”

They all hurried over to look at it, and went down a series of notes until they found a room number.

“Two twelve,” said Murray. “There has to be a master somewhere. Look inside the desk.” They all started fumbling through drawers until Steve came across a huge ring of keys.

“Great, now, which one?” he asked. They looked at it in annoyance; there had to be at least 50, and trying each one out will take all day.

“I have to try,” Mike said. He picked up his radio. “Dustin? Dustin, this is Mike. Do you copy?”

A few moments later, Dustin picked up.

“I copy. What’s going on?”

“Is…is Holly there?”

“Mikey?” Holly asked from the other line, and his heart filled with guilt as he handed the key ring to Joyce.

“HI, Holly. Listen, I’m so, so sorry to bother you with this, but Will’s mom…have you seen her using keys?” There was a pause and then Holly quietly replied.

“Yes.”

“Good, good!” Mike answered. “Good girl, Holly, you’re the best! I know this is a hard question because all keys look the same, but do you know what it looked like?”

“I…I don’t know,” she answered. Kali rolled her eyes.

“Great.”

“She’s six, genius,” Steve cut in, crossing his arms in annoyance. “Did you expect a speech about the type of key she saw?”

“Maybe if I describe some to her,” Joyce said. Mike handed her the radio. “Holly, sweetie? It’s Mrs. Beyers. I have a lot of keys in front of me, and, if I say something that sounds like it, can you say so?”

“It’s okay, Holly,” they heard Karen say from the other end. Then she continued, “Holly just nodded, Joyce. Go on.”

Joyce started thumbing through keys. Some were silver. Some were gold. 

“Some are silver. Was it silver, honey?”

“N- no. It didn’t look silver.” Joyce looked at the keys some more and then continued.

“What about gold?”

“Kind of. But not shiny.”

“Okay…a dull gold. Okay, honey, great. There are about six of those. Did it have a roundish side?”

“I think it was square,” Holly told her. Joyce smiled, and held up the only two keys that fit that description.

“Holly, you are the most amazing girl in the universe. Thank you!”

“Is…is Mikey okay?” Holly asked. Mike took the radio.

“I’m fine, Holly. Don’t worry about me.”

“B-but…but I saw you crying, Mikey. I saw you crying so hard…”

“I was probably just tired,” Mike answered, trying not to panic. “Holly, I’m so sorry, we have to go, but thank you!” With that they hurried over to El’s room, the banging from the cell beneath them getting louder and many voices creating a din of confusion. Joyce tried the first key. Wiggling it, she got nowhere. She tried the second one. It fit. She turned it slowly, and the door opened.

They all gazed at what they saw in disbelief.

El was pale and weak. Her skin was almost grey. There were dark circles of stress and exhaustion under her eyes, which were blinking in response to the sound of the door opening. She lifted up her head, which looked so small and weak. Her hair was shaved off; even shorter than it was when they first saw her. She weakly got up, attached to an IV and a series of wires. 

Mike took one look at her and couldn’t hold his tears back. Joyce joined him.

“El,” he quietly said, and ran over to sit alongside her and wrap his arms around her as gently as he could. The tears wouldn’t stop, his or hers, which is probably what Holly saw. His head leaning alongside hers, they felt the cascade of their tears rolling down their cheeks. The pain of meeting with El in this condition combined with the overwhelming relief of her being okay was just too much. Everyone else just stood, numb. Even Murray had no words. It was heartbreaking.

“I thought…I thought…” El started, but Mike placed a hand to her face, wiping her tears away.

“I know, me too,” he said. “What is this? El, what are these machines?”

“My heart,” El told him. “He…he strained me. I felt pain and then…I collapsed. They had to put me on a flew…id…”

“That son of a bitch,” Kali grumbled, pacing. “He knows that there are limits. He knows that! I remember him being reminded of that as a little girl, over and over again!”

“El, honey,” Joyce said, now that she and Mike had separated and she looked ready to see someone else. “I’m so sorry. I never should have let you go to that hospital alone.” She wrapped her arms around El and held her there. El let a few more sobs escape her throat, but then got herself together, her hand reaching for Mike’s and feeling strength again.

“So now it’s time,” Kali said. “She can’t do it, Olive. There’s no way she can kill him…”

“We can’t,” El cut in. “I’ve…I’ve seen my mother. She showed me something. Something that I think…is important…”

“Don’t strain yourself,” Mike told her, rubbing his finger softly along her hand. “Take your time, okay?”

“Yes, but, realistically speaking, the group of brilliant scientists downstairs will surely figure out how to open a door soon, so maybe we should just let the freak kill him and be done with it,” Murray suggested.

“Not…that simple,” El answered, between heavy breaths. “Papa..doesn’t fear death. Death is not the worst that can happen to him. His greatest fear is…is losing his science. Losing his research.”

“What are you saying?” Kali asked. “You think we should just…I don’t know, destroy the lab?”

“No…do to him…what he did…to my mother. What he did to the shadow monster…the other me…make him a monster. What he thinks is a monster,” El said. “Justice.” They all exchanged looks. Kali looked like she understood and liked this plan. 

“I’m…confused,” Steve cut in. “You’re going to transform him?”

“We’re going to administer enough electrical shocks to his brain to prevent him from ever using it again,” Kali clarified. The rest looked at each other knowingly, but cautiously.

“But…wait, wait, wait,” Murray said. “He’s not working alone. What about the other people who work for him?”

“You think they like working for him?” Kali asked. “The second doctor I saw left willingly. I didn’t have to convince her. She knew I was out to get him and she basically just let me. He’s the superior. He’s the one with the power…”

“…Yeah, and that Seamus guy turned his back on the lab for the same reason,” Mike continued. “Dr. Brenner took a good opportunity to research and made it corrupt. Maybe with someone else with power they can actually do something helpful with this lab. Something that will matter and do good.”

“But how do we do it? El is supposed to be the one doing it and she’s weak,” Joyce cut in.

“Papa didn’t shock Mama,” El continued. “He just told other people to do it. It’s the same thing.”

“I’ll shock him,” Kali said. “I’ve seen him do it to other patients enough times. We just have to figure out how to get him up here.”

Mike squeezed El’s hand a little tighter and turned to Kali.

“I have an idea.”

______________________________________________________________________________

“What are you thinking?” Will looked at Paul cautiously, wondering what Paul was thinking now that Will told him everything. He seemed a bit freaked out; his eyes gazing blankly, but not as afraid as Will thought he’d be.

“I knew it,” Paul mumbled. “I knew that Jane didn’t just push Tony off of her. Ugh, this is crazy but it makes so much more sense.”

“It…makes sense?” Will asked. “That’s honestly the last thing I expected to hear.”

“My dad does a lot of legal work with government entities,” Paul continued. “He’s not supposed to share information with me but…I’m nosy. I’ve heard of projects like these before. But I’ve only caught glimpses of my dad’s notes. I never thought it was this bad.”

“Your dad represents these people?” Will asked, fearing that things were about to be far more complicated.

“Not them in particular, but affiliated sectors. He’ll have to cover them if there’s any damages to government property, things like that. It’s basically anyone who needs him. But this stuff…stuff like this…it’s not supposed to be happening. There are legal limits, laws they’re breaking, probably just because this one guy is in so much power.”

“Can something be done about that?” Will asked. Paul nodded.

“It would be hush-hush, but, if the right people find out this has been happening, there can be stuff done behind the scenes. Changes in positions, protocol, that sort of thing. Especially now that I’ve been involved. My dad can be a little protective. Sometimes OVER protective. The the point that…I feel like I can’t even breathe anymore.” He looked at Will softly, their eyes once again locked, and sighed deeply. “Will…what I said, about how I’m not like you. I was wrong. I am. I was just…scared. Because…my dad…there’s a certain way you have to BE, you know? And if I’m not that way…”

“I get it,” Will said, leaning forward and looking at Paul understandably. “I feared the same thing. But so far, everyone I’ve spoken to, everyone who knows…they’ve been awesome. I mean, I haven’t told my mom or my brother yet, so we’ll see, but…”

“They’re not my parents,” Paul cut in. Will shrugged.

“Well, no, but they’re your parents. They put you here. You really think they’re going to put you up for adoption over this?” Paul looked down, running a finger through his hair.

“It’s weird,” he said. “As much as this has been awful, and I’ve been terrified…I don’t know, when Leslie told me that she thought I liked you I felt…better. Because…I do. I do, Will. And it felt…I don’t know. Free.”

“Free?” Will asked. Paul nodded. The two of them were lost in each other’s stare until Paul took initiative, leaning in and softly kissing Will, placing his hand inside Will’s as he did.

It was quick, sweet – but warm and soft. 

Will never felt so at ease with the universe before. Suddenly, everything made sense. And to know that Paul felt the same – he did – made it all seem worth it. To hell with anyone who judged. To hell with Mike probably yelling at him that he deserved better. He got Paul. He understood. And he was wrong, and a big idiot, but he knew that. 

“Ahem.” The two separated to see Lucas, Max and Dustin standing in the doorway, trying to conceal smiles. They turned red and separated quickly.

“Sorry for interrupting,” Dustin said awkwardly. “But…do we know if there’s something that can be done?”

“Will…I need you to come to my parents,” Paul continued. Will’s eyes widened a bit; everything seemed easier two seconds ago when they were kissing. “No, no…not…just to tell them what’s been going on. You’re the one who’s been to the Upside Down. You can convince them.”

“I have articles,” he continued. “Stuff my Mom collected and kept, just in case anything went wrong. I’ll bring them.”

“Just be careful,” Max told them. “We don’t know if there are more of these guys around and the last thing we need is you guys taken, too.”

________________________________________________________

“Have you got it yet?”

“Dr. Brenner, it’s hard to do this without actual tools,” one of his fellow doctors replied, as he took a leg of a chair and tried to use it to unscrew the hinges of the door. 

“Time is precarious. Eight is extremely dangerous and can clear the hospital of all its patients and information if we don’t get out of here.”

“Papa.”

A voice echoed outside the door.

Eleven.

Or was it?

“Could it be a trick again, sir?”

“Possibly,” Dr. Brenner continued. “Eleven – is that you?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“I’m having a hard time believing that, as your sister has had us locked in this cell with trickery. I need you to tell me something that would prove to me that it is, in fact, you.”

There was a pause. They all looked to Brenner in anticipation, when she said…

“Violets.”

“What?”

“The day you brought me into the tank…you bought me violets. You said that today was a special day. That we would make contact.”

Brenner turned to the others and nodded. 

“Very well, Eleven. I need you to let us out. Because, I assure you, we will get out, and when we do, if you were uncooperative, it will be more than one person who has to die, starting with your Chief.”

“Just you,” Eleven said.

“I am not in a position to negotiate,” Dr. Brenner said.

“Neither am I,” Eleven continued. “I…I could leave right now if I want to. So just you, or I run. You won’t find me this time.” At that, Dr. Brenner turned to the others and nodded.

“It will be okay,” he told them. “She’s very weak and Eight lacks her powers.” He turned back to the door. “Very well, Eleven. Just me. But you let the others out soon after.”

“Yes,” El even’s voice answered. There was a turn of the key and the door opened a crack. One of the other officers attempted to run out, but Dr. Brenner pushed him back.

“Just me, she said,” he continued. He walked out of the cell, and as soon as he was out, he heard the door slam behind him and felt a prick in his neck. He couldn’t see the radio that transmitted El’s voice from where she was hiding upstairs, and he couldn’t see that Steve, the biggest of all of them, held him while Kali administered the sedative.

“Eleven,” he called, holding on to his neck. He felt dizzy and, in seconds, all faded to black.

___________________________________________________________________________

“In here,” Joyce told Murray. While Mike, Kali and Steve were getting the room ready to shock Dr. Brenner and close the gate for good, Joyce and Murray were in the lower level of cells looking for the one where Hopper could be. There were no files on him; Hopper was declared dead and, as such, did not have any official paperwork there. They looked on the monitor in El’s room and saw him…

…and Joyce almost broke down.

He had to have lost at least 50 pounds. He looked frail and thin; so very weak. He was barely alive, shaking and convulsing. He looked as though he hadn’t bathed properly in months. He was covered in shaggy, unkept hair. 

The corner of the room had a number – B 22. That’s where he was. That’s where they’d find him.

She took the string of keys and tried the other square key on that room. Sure enough, the key turned and the door opened.

The smell instantly hit them. The each retracted backwards in disgust. 

He was like a wild animal, unhygienic, unkept, in desperate need of medical attention. Despite how entirely unpleasant it was, Joyce ran to him, and placed her arms around him.

“Hop,” she said softly, tears falling down her face. “Hop, it’s me. It’s Joyce. Hop, wake up!” He stirred a bit, startled, and looked defensive and frightened as though he was ready to be shocked again. Tears fell faster. He was alive, but barely functional; barely able to even process her. “Murray, we have to get him to a hospital!”

“How are we going to do that?” Murray asked. “He’s got no papers, no records. He’s legally dead.” 

“Dr. Owens,” Joyce called. “We….we have to call Dr. Owens.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________  
Dr. Brenner’s vision was blurry. Then, he started making out the figure. A girl. A beautiful young girl with no hair, who should be hooked up to an IV at the present moment, but was, rather, sitting there. Sitting there in clothes entirely too big and long on her. Clothes that belonged to a boy…a boy who shouldn’t be there…

“Hello, Papa,” she said to him, her eyes sad and full of tears. She stepped closer, and he was getting ready to get up, but was restrained to the bed where he was sitting.

“Eleven…Eleven, I insist that you get me off of this thing,” he said, struggling, and more tears fell from her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Eleven told him, her eyes sad and guilty, but she continued. “Papa…I’m sorry, and it’s sad that I should be sorry. I shouldn’t. Because you hurt me and you were never sorry. But…we have to close the gate to this universe or everyone will be hurt, even you. And…if you can help to save our country, it would be really…selfish of you not to, right?”

“Eleven, I’m the only one who can! I’m the only one who understands this universe.”

“You don’t know about it,” Eleven said. “There are monsters and things about it you don’t know.”

“You only know how to hurt,” came a voice from behind Brenner. Kali showed herself, standing directly next to El, the two of them stared at him angrily.

“Girls…this isn’t you. I didn’t…neither of you would ever hurt your Papa. I raised you. I kept you alive.”

“Alive?” Kali asked, her voice practically roaring. “I’m scraping to survive! You’ve ripped away everything that’s ever mattered to me.”

“You sent the men after Mama,” El told him. “You shot her. S-she could die.”

“I had to do what I had to do to protect you, Eleven,” Brenner said, his voice attempting to soften. “You were straining yourself too much. I didn’t trust that she would stay out of your head.”

“You hurt Hop,” El continued. “You hurt Paul. And you’ll hurt Mike and Will or my friends…I can’t let you. I have to do this.”

“Do what?” Suddenly, Dr. Brenner heard the buzz of a machine. Kali moved and stood alongside Mike, who had his fingers on the dial. She grabbed two of the knobs, and placed a mouthpiece inside of Brenner’s mouth, despite his protests and wails. El, crying, remembered her mother – how scared she was, and how calm Dr. Brenner was, and what he said precisely before he robbed her of her ability to ever properly function again.

“Four fifty,” El said. A scream escaped from his throat as Kali turned the dial, placed the knobs to Dr. Brenner’s head, and applied pressure.

The buzz in the room was deafening. El covered her ears and watched as her Papa convulsed before her. Kali held the knobs to his head tightly, as though doing it brought her a pleasure that she was ashamed to feel. As El watched Papa – obsessed with knowledge, insight, and scientific exploration, very slowly lose his most valued tool, she was startled by further noise.

There was a loud vibration, and, once Kali was finished and Dr. Brenner fell to the bed in a heap, his eyes closed, the power magnified and went out. There was a bit of a tremor; as though there was some kind of an Earthquake. This part of Illinois didn’t have Earthquakes; surely this would draw attention and raised eyebrows.

Suddenly, it stopped.

The Gate.

Mike hurried over to El, who looked ready to break down in tears, and held her there. She sobbed into his scrubs, which he wore in exchange for giving her his warm clothes before, and he rubbed her back softly. Steve, meanwhile, helped Kali, who was frozen in place to turn off the machine. He turned to them.

“Was that…”

“It’s done,” Kali said. “It’s…it’s over.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The calm after the storm...with things as intense as they've been, there are certain parents who need to let their children know ho much they mean to them.

_THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY_  
Neurological Exploration Division  
Dr. Seamus Orion  
4477 Main Street  
Hawkins, Indiana, 45215 

_DR. MARK KERSTEN_  
435 Cherry Oak Drive  
Carmel Indiana, 46032 

_December 1, 1986_

_Dear Dr. Kersten,_

_This is to inform you of the changes made to the Neurological Exploration Division as a result of the unauthorized breach of protocol consistently taking place between the years of 1971 and 1986 under the leadership of Dr. Martin Brenner. As an employee of the laboratory division in question, this will impact your current employment status._

_The legal team exploring the practices of Dr. Martin Brenner and his laboratory have determined that the protocol used did not comply with ethical standards as established in our original guidelines. Due to Dr. Brenner’s seniority and esteemed reputation in the department, these matters were not closely monitored or reported by any employees of the Department of Energy. Reporting activity that is illegal and against entity protocol is required of all employees. Therefore, please note your current change of status below._

_CURRENT EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Demoted to Level 1 Research Assistant._

_NEW ASSIGNMENT: Montauk, NY_

_Note that all those who did not report suspicious activity have been demoted and the discrepancy in their current salary and new Level 1 wages will be used to compensate the department for legal fees owed to the plaintiffs reporting neglect and abuse. This change in protocol is to be kept strictly confidential, and any public report of Departmental Affairs can result in immediate discharge._

_As Dr. Brenner is incapacitated, and otherwise has been officially discharged from the position, the Department has made me, Dr. Seamus Orion his successor. Under my leadership, there will be a strict set of ethical protocols for all government-funded research, which will be monitored by our aforementioned legal team on regular intervals. It is legally required for any employee to report a breach of protocol, especially when that results in the potential harm of vulnerable test subjects._

_You are expected to report to your new position on January 1, 1987. Please use the next few weeks to secure your situation and prepare to report to work._

_Any questions regarding your new assignment can be best directed to Attorney Brad Richards._

_We look forward to beginning our new vision in the field of ethical scientific advancement with you!_

_Sincerely,_

_Dr. Seamus Orion  
U.S. Department of Energy_

__________________________________________________________________________

“Joyce.”

Joyce got up from the dismal hospital room where she was waiting impatiently to hurry over to Dr. Owens, who had just finished his review of Hopper’s progress. She looked at him hopefully, her eyes still shining from the tears that she’d shed alone. Murray, not in any way defined as family or next of kin, was asked to wait outside, and he went over to Joyce’s car to nap. She was here on her own, for Hop, the father of the child for whom she was legally responsible, and El.

She drove off with Hopper and Murray first. She certainly didn’t want El seeing him in that condition. Joyce had hurried to the phone to call Dr. Owens, who was incidentally on another call – Terry and Becky Ives were shot. Anything involving this case was always referred to him. Becky was declared DOA, and Terry and a woman identified as Bernice Emerson (but who Dr. Owens revealed was Alice) were being treated at a hospital near their home. Upon hearing the news, he requested that they be transferred to Carmel and all patients secure under one roof for his care.

Hopper was immediately thoroughly cleaned and put in quarantine for examination. With him in the Upside Down so long and not neurologically responsive, the doctors were concerned to put him in contact with other patients and wanted Dr. Owens to see him first.

He got there fairly quickly. They had arrived at the hospital at 11:00 AM and it was now almost 3. He immediately tended to Hopper as his condition was newest and most critical.

“What’s going on?” Joyce asked, fear eminent in her voice.

“It’s…it’s not good, Joyce. Jim’s exposure to electromagnetic shocks in addition to whatever else he encountered in the other world have impacted his cognitive functioning. It’s hard to say whether this is a result of Post Traumatic Stress or long lasting physical damage. The doctors in charge of him have drawn blood and are taking a CT Scan. His vitals are weak; he’s been put through the ringer. But he’s strong, Joyce, and if anyone can make it through, it’s him.” Joyce nodded, tears falling down her face, nodding.

“And…and El?”

“El is being treated by Dr. Flora Sienna and there’s no one better. I can’t show you charts yet, but from a purely theoretical standpoint, I’m going to highly recommend that you treat her with therapy. I know a few very good people. To have to endure an experience that traumatic a second time around is sure to impact her, and she’ll need support and help to ease her of that pain and anxiety. Insofar as the lasting impact of the strain, it’s hard to say. Dr. Sienna will be in soon.”

___________________________________________________________________________________

“I can’t believe I’m not allowed in there,” Mike grumbled, pacing up and down the waiting room of the hospital. 

“Family only, son,” Ted told him, reaching out a cup of water for him to take. “Drink more. You’re going to get yourself dehydrated.”

“I’m FINE, Dad. What about her? I was with her the whole time. Who cares if I’m officially family?”

“Rules are rules, and she’s being treated,” Ted reminded him. “Pacing the waiting room isn’t going to make her any better, so why don’t you sit?” Mike sighed deeply and plopped down on the seat next to him, almost wishing that the others had stayed. After almost a full day free of sleep, Nancy and Jonathan brought Steve back to Joyce’s apartment to get some sleep. Kali was waiting outside; she wanted to see El as well but seemed to have had enough of everyone’s company (and Mike imagined that what they did to Brenner was straining, even if she did want to do it). Ted told Mike that he would stay with him in the hospital after he adamantly refused to leave El alone only to have her ripped from his arms, placed in a stretcher and brought into another room to be treated by Dr. Sienna, who Kali called before they left.

They sat quietly, staring into space, until Ted attempted conversation.

“You think those other doctors will be okay? That Mr. Bauman’s anonymous call got them saved fast? The ones locked downstairs,” Ted asked. 

“I don’t care,” Mike grumbled. “They did this to her. They deserve what they get.”

“Maybe they were being threatened too, son,” Ted suggested. “Maybe they’ve got families and were afraid for them. Ever think of that?” Mike, starting to feel resentful, turned to Ted boldly.

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Lots of people do things that aren’t right because they’re afraid,” Ted stressed. “Like…every parenting decision they’ve ever made has been wrong, so they cut their losses and just let their wife handle it. Thinking they’re saving everyone the headache of having an incompetent ruin things. But it turns out that that just makes his son think he doesn’t care. Only he does. He cares very much. He loves him.” He and Mike exchanged a soft look, and hearing his father say he cared made Mike suddenly feel a little better. “I know I’ve been hard on you, Michael. With school, with this girl, with everything. I know Mom and I haven’t always…seen eye to eye. But I’ve just been in a rut. I just have been going about things all wrong. And that’s going to change.”

“Well…I don’t get it,” Mike said. “What changed?”

“Because I used to think that just bringing home a paycheck and making sure that you kids were doing the right thing was what mattered. Then when this fellow came in to take Holly; I don’t know. I snapped. I realized I have to do more. I’m going to be there, son. Just like you are for this girl.”

Mike nodded, skeptical, but appreciative that his dad could recognize this and seek to change. He took the cup of water and sipped it slowly.

“How’d you meet her?” Ted asked.

“I…I told you, Dad. In the woods. She was alone. In the rain, in the cold. Remember?”

“And…when did you decide that this girl was something special?” Mike smiled to himself, looking down at his water cup and blushing.

“As soon as I saw her.”

“Just like me and your Mom,” Ted told him. “We had a friend set us up. I took her to dinner…some little steakhouse place that closed. I saw her looking a little nervous; doing that thing that she does when she’s anxious…”

“Tossing her hair back?” Mike asked. The two of them laughed.

“Yes. She was wearing this dress…can’t remember exactly what it looked like, I think it was pink, but I just remember how absolutely beautiful she looked. Like a model. Only she looked so scared…to meet ME. And I was thinking, ‘How lucky am I to have this beautiful creature nervous to meet some blockhead like me? But, hey, you’re not the nerd that I was. You probably don’t feel that way yourself.”

“All the time. I think that all the time, Dad. Does it stop?’”

“Never. Not once. But in your case, she’s getting a much better deal than your Mom did. Trust me.” There was a long, awkward silence, and then Ted took a deep breath. “Son…you remember that talk we had when you were 12? You know, about…dating and babies and…where they come from…”

“Oh, God…” Mike mumbled.

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing…I just want to make sure that you and this girl…well, sometimes, there are feelings you might have, and it’s perfectly natural to…I mean…you’re YOUNG, and…it’s different now, you can really be so much safer about…”

“It’s not like that, Dad. We’re not…at that place right now,” Mike told him. Ted exhaled deeply, relief oozing out of him.

“Oh, thank God. I mean, I trust you to be smart about it, Michael, but it is the 80s and you just…”

“Okay, Dad, good talk,” Mike told him. The two of them dodged each other’s gaze for a minute, until Ted placed a hand on Mike’s shoulder.

“I’m proud of you, son.”

“B-because…because El and I aren’t…”

“NO! I mean, yes, but…not just that. You’re really growing to be a wonderful young man. You work hard, you care, you love, you’re responsible, you take control. You really, really made me proud today.” Mike couldn’t hide his smile and the redness coming to his cheeks. He couldn’t remember the last time his father expressed pride in him. He smiled back.

“Thanks, Dad.”

________________________________________________________________________________

“This earthquake is on every channel,” Dustin said to the others as they flipped channels at Joyce’s house. The living room was full. Nancy, Jonathan, Max, Dustin, Lucas and Leslie were all watching the news after Nancy on Jonathan filled them in on everything that happened. Kali went into El’s room to get some sleep, as she seemed exhausted and drained, and Karen and Holly were settled in Joyce’s room, coloring to relax Holly.

“Well, an Earthquake in Hawkins? Who knew officially sealing the gate would be that crazy.”

“I think it was because it was from so far away,” Dustin suggested. 

“I don’t understand,” Max said, shaking her head. “How could this parallel version of El possibly know that El had fried this guy’s brain?” Dustin thought a moment, then replied.

“Well, Mike said that this scientist believed the monster got inside of El and possessed a piece of her, and it’s existing in pieces – whatever remnants we left in the cabin. If a piece of El got into this monster when it tried possessing her, it could probably sense her, just like Will could sense the gate. “

“Crazy,” Lucas said. “Although it is pretty badass.. Mike said El’s mom knew what was happening but couldn’t speak. Imagine him knowing that this lab is still existing but he’s got nothing to do with it? That’s got to be torture.”

“It’s amazing, though,” Nancy said. “Kali explained…the doctor that’s treating El now hated him. Wanted him dead. She just walked out knowing they were there to kill him. Can you imagine? How many people do you think could have stopped this if they all came together years ago?”

“Easier said than done,” Dustin continued. “Look at history. Look at the Holocaust, look at slavery, look at unfair institutions where regular people just mistreated other people. It’s hard to stand up to authority figures. It’s hard to risk everything to do what’s right.”

“Damn, that was deep,” Leslie told him. “Are you planning on being a history teacher or something? Because you’d be really awesome at it.”

“Don’t get him started on history,” Max mumbled. 

“Hey!” Dustin said. “I thought you guys liked my lectures!”

“Oh, they’re a thrill and a half,” Max dryly replied. “But at least you’re consistent with them. Not like the two weeks you played Lacrosse.”

“You played LACROSSE?” Jonathan asked. They started laughing as Dustin turned red.

“Well, Suzie said she liked me with or without it, so I no longer felt like subjecting myself to it.”

“The things we’ll do for love,” Lucas teased. They all giggled a bit, and it felt good to let some of the tension go.

“You guys are seriously awesome,” Leslie said. “Hopper was right. Can you all stay here forever please?”

_________________________________________________________________

El gazed into space.

She couldn’t define how she was feeling at the moment. It wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t happiness. It wasn’t relief. It wasn’t satisfaction.

It was…numbness.

She felt alone.

Empty.

She knew that Mike was right, and that Dr. Brenner didn’t deserve her sympathy or her compassion, but she couldn’t help but fixate on the look on his face as he screamed, as Kali placed a mouthpiece inside of him, as he wailed knowing what was about to happen to him. At the look of pain and discomfort on his face as Kali did to him what he did to her mother.

Her mother…

How did he look at her face and not care? How did he look at her suffer like that and not feel a thing? What was WRONG with him? What made him that way? How did he start life as an innocent baby and grow into the kind of person who would take every bit of consciousness and life out of a person and not care?

She was glad she didn’t kill him. She had killed too much, and she wasn’t supposed to. Children were not programmed to hurt, and the fact that he had ordered her to do this so many times – to injure or even kill someone – it broke her.

Was she a bad person, too?

Was she just as bad as he was?

Her eyelids became heavy to the sound of the monitor beeping and she drifted off to sleep, the effects of the drug that Dr. Sienna gave her to help her relax kicking in…

And then she saw her.

Her mother.

Only she didn’t look like her mother. She was vibrant, awake – beautiful. Alert. She smiled at her and came close, looking at El like she was about to cry or laugh and she couldn’t decide which to do first.

“Jane…you’re just so beautiful.” El blinked. Was this real? Was she imagining it?

“Mama…how…how are you doing this? How can you talk to me?”

“I’m…at sort of an in-between place,” Terry explained, sitting alongside El in the vision she held of herself on the hospital bed. “That bullet – it hit me pretty hard.”

“In…between?” El asked, sincerely confused. Jane sighed.

“Neither Becky or I were very religious, so we wouldn’t have taught you about it if we could. I’m…in between this world. And the next. The one that comes…after you die.”

“You’re going to die?” El asked, feeling her heart overcome with sadness. “But...there’s no way…”

“Now, now, Jane, relax,” Terry said, placing her arm around her shoulder. “Nothing’s definite yet. But…I feel it. The warmth of it. And it’s funny; I’ve been scared of it my whole life, really, but it’s calm. Peaceful. Warm. Like a lazy nap on a hammock on a warm summer’s day but better.”

“Hammock?” El asked. Terry sighed, seemingly sadder than before, but still with a content smile remaining on her face.

“It’s a little thing you tie to trees and lie down on. It’s hard to remember you don’t have memories of pleasant things like that. I’m sorry for all that you’ve missed out on,” Terry told her. “Things that you don’t know about, that you didn’t get to experience. I wish…I wish I could have saved you.”

“You gave up everything for me, Mama,” El told her, leaning close and giving her another hug. “Everything. There was nothing more you could do.”

“Well…I almost wonder if I want to go back. Go back and live life the way I’ve been living it. Sitting alone, unable to think, to speak, to function. I feel…ready. If that makes sense. I liked that warmth, Jane. I want to go there. I haven’t felt it in years.”

“But I never got to know you,” El said, feeling her eyes fill with tears. “I wish…I wish I could.”

“Shhh, my love,” Terry told her, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “Jane…my beautiful girl…if I go back, you won’t know me, either. He took me away from this world just like he took your childhood away from you. But you’ve survived. You’ve gotten past it and become just this incredible young woman. With a boyfriend. Probably like your father.”

“M-my father?” El asked. Terry nodded, still smiling, but wiping a stray tear.

“Andrew. He was wonderful. Smart. Watched over me. He was sent overseas to fight in the war and died while I was carrying you. But…if I go, if I go to that warm place, I can be with him again. And your Aunt Becky.”

“Will…will I go one day, too?” El asked. Terry nodded, smiling. 

“Of course you will, Jane. Of course.” She leaned her head down and kissed El’s head, then rubbed her back as she continued. “If I do go, just know – every day, no matter what, no matter what you do or what mistakes you make, that I love you more than anything in this world. You are my life, my girl. My everything. And all I want for you to is to find what makes you happy and run to catch it. Never let it go; not for anything. Okay?”

“Okay,” El replied. “I…I love you too, Mama. Thank you…thank you for trying to save me.” El felt herself engulged in her mother’s arms until, suddenly, she found herself alone. 

Mama was gone.

_________________________________________________________________

Joyce walked into the waiting room where Mike and Ted impatiently sat, and Mike stood up anxiously, eager to hear any news.

“Well? What’s happening?” Mike asked. Joyce sighed, looking deeply relieved.

“El is stable. They were able to get her into a good condition. Provided she doesn’t exert herself or use her powers in the next few weeks, she should be fine and I imagine they’ll discharge her soon.”

“Good,” Mike said, unable to hide his smile, when it occurred to him there were were other pressing matters. “And…Hop?”

“He’s physically stable, but he’s knee deep in PTSD. He’s vacant, he’s unresponsive. They got him asleep and they’re guessing that he’ll probably need several months of counseling and support to get himself to function normally. But he will. The doctors have hope. However…there is one issue.”

“What?” Mike asked, concerned.

“Her mother…she didn’t survive the gunshot wound, Mike. She was declared about 15 minutes ago.”

“Shit,” Mike whispered. “El…she’s going to be so heartbroken.”

“She is, sweetie. I just went in to see her. She said she wanted to be alone but…” Joyce reached a hand to Mike’s shoulder and patted it. “I kind of think she’d be okay with some company too. Maybe you can try. She’s in room 245 and can take visitors now.”

“Of course,” Mike said.

“Take your time, son,” Ted told him. Mike nodded and, his heart pounding with fear, he started walking in the direction of El’s room. 

He opened the door to see her curled up like a ball in her bed, tears dripping slowly down her cheeks and her body shaking with sobs. 

“Can…can I come in?” Mike asked. El nodded, and Mike sat down on the bed alongside her and rubbed her back.

“I’m sorry, El,” he told her, his own heart breaking seeing the sobs on her face.

“H-hold me?” El asked. Mike nodded without hesitation, and shifted himself so that he was lying alongside her and holding her next to him. She cried into his shirt, clinging on to him for dear life and pouring out every last bit of grief.

“I’m here,” Mike told her. “Always.” With that, the two lay quietly as Mike held El until she drifted once again into a peaceful sleep.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone...this will be the last formal CHAPTER, but there will be a LONG epilogue that goes into El and Mike's future after this. That being said, as the major plot points have closed here, thanks so much to everyone for their readership, and I hope you love this conclusion well as the epilogue to follow. Enjoy!

_December 21, 1986_

_Dear Ms. Ives,_

_This may be very weird since you don’t know me and we haven’t even spoken. This thing is, though, that I’m not religious or spiritual or anything like that, but I really feel like, if I say all of this, you can somehow hear it. Or sense it, whatever the case may be._

_First and foremost, I want to thank you for El. Well…you call her Jane. I call her El. She told me when I found her that her name was Eleven and it made me feel bad. Kids shouldn’t be a number; they should be a person. So, I shortened it to El and it sort of stuck. I hope you don’t mind that I don’t call her Jane. It’s a beautiful name; it’s just not what I think of when I see her._

_Anyway, I thought you may want to know a little about your daughter from the perspective of someone who loves her. What she’s like. She’s amazing. First of all, the most important thing to know about El is that she loves with her whole heart and she cares deeply about her friends. She almost died for me, for our other friends, so many times. She would do anything to protect the people that she cares about, and I think that’s really amazing, especially since she grew up without any love in that terrible place where she was taken away from you. Another thing about her is that she’s smart, only she doesn’t realize she is. And I don’t mean smart as in she gets 100 on every test; I mean smart as in curious, eager to learn, always asking questions and trying her best to figure out this world she knows nothing about when lots of people would be so scared and overwhelmed by all of it that they wouldn’t even bother. She’s also kind of funny. I don’t know if she means to be, it could be that one of the things Dr. Brenner never taught her was tact, but she reacts so bluntly and honestly to people, yet it’s in this innocent way where she doesn’t mean to be hurtful or offensive, and there’s something sweet and endearing about it. She’s also picking up on certain things; sass, snark, sarcasm, and I must say, she’s mastering the art of using those things. She likes to laugh. For someone who’s been through a lot of pain she manages to laugh. Her laugh is beautiful and sweet. I think that’s incredible. She’s incredible._

_Another thing that makes me sad is that she’s very insecure. Despite being the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen she doesn’t seem to believe me when I tell her how beautiful she is. Despite learning so much in a short time, she doesn’t think she’s smart. If you have any way of helping her see how amazing she is, can you? I mean, I know it’s hard. You’re her mom. I never listen to my mom when she tells me I’m handsome because she’s biased and all…but I feel like El would believe you._

_The last thing that I want to tell you about El is how special she is, and how much she’s always meant to me. I was just this nerdy kid who never stuck up for myself when I met her. She did something to me; did something with her kindness and preserverence and strength. She made me want to defend myself. She helped me see the value in myself and my friends, and to put everything on the line to make things right. She gave me a reason to want to step it up. She changed me. She has power over me stronger than any of the powers Dr. Brenner has trained into her. I know we’re only 15, but…I know she’s it for me. She’s the one. I want to marry her, Ms. Ives. She told me you and her father never got your chance to be happy, and I want to make that up to you and him by making sure every day of my life that your daughter is happy. It’s the most important thing to me._

_So, just as a closing, thank you. Thank you for making such a beautiful person and bringing her into the world. I’m sorry that you didn’t get to know her; that you didn’t get to be close, that you never had the joy of being in her presence and letting her pretty, dimpled smile warm your heart the way it warms mine. But just know that she is being taken care of. All that fighting that you did – it’s not in vain. Your Jane has a family and friends who love her more than anything, and we all couldn’t be more thankful to you for bringing her to us._

_Love,_

_Mike Wheeler_

December 19th, 1986

Mike waited impatiently in the basement where he found so much peace and solace in his life, pacing. His Christmas gift to El was almost ready. He just needed one final piece that Jonathan was supposed to bring, and he was running late. 

He hoped that this gift could do something – anything – to cheer El up a bit. She’d been back at school for the last 2 weeks. After 2 weeks out, and with her hair gone, she was terrified to return and all of her fears were justified as her look, explained to anyone who asked as due to a “medical procedure” (not entirely a lie), resulted in one of two responses. One was people looking at her with pity and treating her like a three-year-old, the other was disgust, fear, or just plain cruelty. Mike couldn’t tell which annoyed El more. Barely anyone treated her normally. Even Leslie was a little taken aback seeing her, just because she had never seen her like that, even if she did adjust to it. 

As if the entire debilitating experience of attending school in those conditions wasn’t hard enough, she had to endure the loss of a mother she didn’t really know and the struggle of a father who had taken her in. Hop was coming around. Dr. Owens saw to it that he had the best of care. El was relieved to have been able to hug him, to talk to him, to see bits of him come out of their traumatized shell when she spoke to him, but Joyce insisted that she limit her time with him as he was being treated in and lived in a special unit of the hospital. Part of his PTSD was unpredictable triggers that would lead to an aggressive impulse, and the last thing Joyce wanted was for him to accidentally hurt her. Hop felt bad enough that the sound of a creak – reminding him of a door opening in the prison – caused him to impulsively throw the hot tray of food in front of him and narrowly miss Joyce by inches. However, the doctor said awareness of his error, accountability, an attempt to manage it were all signs of good progress. Plus it was weeks later, and the therapy was working. He was much more himself.

Still, while the doctors were very impressed at Hop’s quick response to treatment, he still wasn’t home with El. He was transferred over to a center closer to them in Illinois, but they had to go to see him on good days when he was free. There were more these days. They anticipated that he would be well enough to join the family and come to Hawkins for Christmas, where they’d insisted on not imposing on the Wheelers and getting one hotel room for them and a second for El, Jonathan and Will. Still, there was still the possibility of the doctors changing their mind, and that stressed El out too.

On top of that, El was so busy catching up on the schoolwork she missed that she barely had time to rest, and the doctors tried to push her not to overexert herself. Mike was always worried that she was going to have some kind of a breakdown and that was the last thing he needed.

The benefit to everything was that his parents and Joyce worked out an arrangement for them to see each other more often. Twice a month at least. It worked out especially since Terry didn’t live too far from Hawkins and, in the middle of December, she came back for the weekend for a service for Terry and Becky and to go through their things for anything she wanted before the property was emptied and sold. Since El was next of kin on paper, the money from the sale of the house would go to her exclusively, and Mrs. Byers arranged to put it in a savings account, no matter how much El insisted that Joyce could use it. Mike was amazed at how giving and loyal Mrs. Byers was; that she cared so much for El that she wouldn’t take a cent from her in return for the care she offered for years. 

Still, when they did see each other, while El seemed noticeably happier in Mike’s company, she also seemed so far away. She pored over her books and got frustrated when she didn’t understand things, no matter how much Mike reassured her that she would. Her eyes were distant and foggy. It was only when they snuggled together on the couch of his basement and he read her a book or they watched a show that she seemed to calm herself a bit. 

All that being considered, Mike really wished Jonathan would just get there already. El was due to come back to Hawkins again tomorrow for Christmas. He had one day and the gift was almost done. He had to make it perfect.

Finally the basement door opened and Mike bolted to see who was there.

Nancy.

“Nance, where’s Jonathan?” Mike asked. Nancy rolled her eyes, walking down the stairs, a full envelope in her hands.

“Hello to you too, Mike.”

“Sorry, Nancy,” Mike said, giving his sister a hello hug and looking back to her for an answer. “I’m just…a wreck about El lately. I want this gift to be perfect.”

“Change of plans. He went home first to spend a day with Will and El; understandable since they’re dealing with so much there. He is a man of his word, though, and sent me with these.” Mike grabbed the envelope that Nancy held out to him and opened them. Inside were glossy, bright photographs of him and El taken at Thanksgiving before everything happened. Her hair flowing down. A few were pictures that Jonathan tried taking when they saw each other after Terry’s service and things calmed down. Even without her hair, she looked absolutely beautiful. Mike smiled.

“They’re amazing.” 

“Yeah, well, with a subject like El, you can’t go wrong, can you?” Nancy asked, giving Mike a smile and watching him turn red. “You guys are just…you’re really something else, you know?”

Mike nodded, his smile huge and sincere.

“I don’t know about me. She is, though. She’s really something else.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
The day before going to Hawkins, Joyce told El to dress nice. They had to attend a meeting that had something to do with her time in the lab. She wasn’t sure what it was about; it came up almost out of nowhere. She didn’t have very many nice things to wear. Leslie lent her a button-down blouse and a skirt that she had that her mother made her wear once. 

They were sitting in an office, quiet as they so often were. Joyce’s hand was resting on El’s, which it did many times in the last few weeks. This probably meant that this was going to be difficult. Not much was spoken about Papa since everything happened, but, from the way Joyce said this was important and dodged the topic, El was pretty sure that this is what it was about.

A moment later, a man stood in the office. El recognized him. She saw him in the hospital the day that Paul was drugged. He had Paul’s handsome face and charming charisma.

“Jane Hopper?” he asked. Jane stood up alongside Joyce and the two followed Mr. Richards into another room, where several other people were sitting. He guided them to two chairs and they had a seat.

“Thank you both for coming in today. I’m Brad Richards, attorney for the U.S. Department of Energy, and these are my associates who are just here to document paperwork. On a side, I understand you’re friends with my son, Paul.”

“Yes,” Jane said, nodding. Paul had been so good to her since everything happened; gave her as in depth an apology in person as he did in the letter that he wrote her. They went back to tutoring and El was glad to have him as her friend again, because, frankly, she was starting to miss him. He was a good person, even if he did mess up. Her friends forgave her for any mistakes she ever made, and she would do the same for him.

“Thanks for being a good friend to Paul. As you know, high school can be…rough,” Paul said, his eyes far away. El wondered if he had told his dad about himself yet, and it seemed that he may have. Will and him decided to just play it cool and be friends, since Paul didn’t seem ready or in the place to commit fully and Will himself decided he didn’t want to be with someone who wasn’t ready for it. It was peaceful and mutual, and the group maintained their dynamic (and the two of them maintained their flirting despite not officially dating, so El was kind of confused). 

Still, now wasn’t the time…

“Anyway, the reason that we’ve called you in today is that, as I’m sure you’re aware, there were some serious breaches of protocol in the way that Dr. Brenner ran his research facility. That being said, we are trying to move on and continue with more ethical, dignified research from the Department of Energy. To eliminate any further proceedings with those impacted by the research, the legal team is offering a settlement to any of those impacted by the research done. We have done the same with Ms. Kali Prasad, who was happy to take the settlement offered. She may have told you that.”

“No,” El said, shaking her head. Kali spoke to her briefly after everything, and said that she was sorry for her mother…but since then had kind of drifted away. Although there were some rumors that she and Steve exchanged numbers and were talking.

“Well…yours is the biggest settlement we are offering since the emotional and physical damage done to you has been the most substantial. We are devising a contract to offer this settlement in exchange for an agreement to move forward and not to bring any of these issues to the press.”

“So you’re paying for her silence, is that correct?” Joyce asked. Mr. Richards looked at Joyce with a challenging smile on his face.

“Mrs. Byers…I am not going to lie, that certainly is what one can argue it trickles down to. However, bear in mind a few things – our government is a dynamic operation with a great deal on its plate. There have been things overlooked before. Fixating on the errors of one entity limit our progress in matters where it is important. We have 18-year-old boys overseas who need us. We have prisoners of war scattered all over the world. Our investments are best made there. This research has prevented Ms. Hopper form living a normal life and this settlement will give her the assurance of a life free of enslavement or government control ever again. I would read over the contract before making up your mind.”

He put some paperwork over in El’s direction and she and Joyce looked at it.

El saw the number before her and was astounded. She had never seen that many zeros in front of a monetary figure tied to her name in her life. 

Joyce looked to El.

“El, this is up to you, sweetie,” she said softly. “You don’t have to do anything you’re uncomfortable doing.”

“I want to share it with you,” El said, looking at Joyce hopefully.

“No, El, we had this discussion about the house…”

“But it’s what I WANT,” El insisted, holding Joyce’s hand. “The house…Mama left it to me, that was different; it’s what she wanted and you respected her. This is mine. And I want to share it with you, or I won’t take it. Please. Half and half?”

“No. El…”

“Please.”

“What’s done with it is a secondary consideration,” Mr. Richards interjected, reminding them that an entire room of people was still present. “Do you agree to the terms of the contract?” El looked at the terms, written in legal jargin that was hard to understand. Yet she understood well enough to know one thing – this would mean that this chapter of her life would close. She wouldn’t speak of Papa again, would never let anyone know what happened to her, and would take the money offered and run to live a peaceful life with her new family. Joyce may be upset by the silent factor, but El didn’t mind silence. It sure beat thinking about it ever again.

“Yes.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
Hopper was sure that he had everything packed.

The clothes that Joyce bought him, which were several sizes smaller than they were before everything happened. The watch that Max found for him. The cards that El wrote him while he was there. The few possessions he had left after his life turned upside down.

The doctors gave him permission to take that trip to Hawkins for Christmas. He hadn’t had a violent episode in two weeks and was learning and practicing the coping strategies for any triggers that he had. Joyce had been nothing but good to him, but he hated showing the frustration that, after everything, he wanted more. He didn’t want a mother figure. No, not from Joyce. He saw her entirely differently.

She was her usual frantic self, going through his hospital room, making sure that they didn’t forget everything, asking if he had his medication. He wondered when the last time was that she slept through a full night. He wondered if she ever had a night to herself to sit with some wine and a good movie. She never got a chance to rest.

Which is why, when she was fumbling around looking for extra gauze in case he bit his inner lip again, he held her hand softly.

“Stop,” he gently told her. She looked at him, surprised.

“Hop, come on, you KNOW that you bite your inner lip. What about…” but she never finished, because Hop leaned himself in, and, very slowly and cautiously, pressed his lips against hers, softly reaching an arm behind her back. She backed away, and he gazed into her brown eyes, which were gentle, sweet, and vulnerable.

“Hop…”

“I love you, Joyce,” he said abruptly. Rubbing the side of her face with his large hand and looking at her sincerely. “You’ve been so busy taking care of me, taking care of El, taking care of EVERYONE…I just never had a chance to tell you.” 

“Hop…I mean…I love you too. Obviously or I…I wouldn’t be here.”

“Yes, but it’s nice to hear, isn’t it?” Hop asked, smiling at her as he placed her hands in his. Joyce smiled back. 

“Yes…it…it is.” She reached up and gently kissed him back, placing her hands around his neck and releasing the tension she’d felt around him for months, for years. They were interrupted by a loud cough in the doorway, where a nurse was standing, looking half disapproving and half amused.

“If I’m not…interrupting anything…are you ready to go so that we can prepare the room for the next patient?”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

There was a knock on her door, and El looked up to see Hop standing there, smiling.

She jumped off of her bed, away from her pile of books and ran to give him an enormous hug, relieved beyond anything that it worked out and that she wasn’t seeing Hop in that awful hospital.

“I’m glad to see you too,” he said softly, and leaned back to look at her. “Holy cow, kid, look at this mess of books. You’re becoming quite the little nerd.”

“Hey!” El laughed, and he laughed back.

“Oh, you know I’m only joking.” He sat on the edge of her bed and picked a book up, then thrust it down. “Wow, I don’t miss high school.” El laughed at sat alongside him, holding on to his hand.

“So…you’re out to stay?”

“That’s what the doctors say,” Hopper said. “I mean, granted, I’m on permanent disability so that means I can’t work, but Dr. Owens saw to it that I was offered a settlement as well. That should keep me and you in good shape. Although…you should know that Joyce has arranged for me to stay here with you guys. For good.”

“Like…like a family?” El asked, her eyes lighting up. He nodded.

“Yeah. Like a family. All of us. It’ll be a big battle every morning for the bathroom, but Joyce runs a pretty tight ship, so I think we’ll be fine.”

“I’m so glad!” El said, giving him a huge hug. He held her there for a moment, then, kissing her on the forehead, his voice became more serious.

“Listen…I’m sorry, kid,” he said. “I wasn’t the kind of dad you deserved before everything happened. I didn’t respect your feelings. I was wrong about Mike. He’s a good kid. He’s been good to you. I behaved in a way I’m not proud of. But…that’s part of therapy, see; they’re helping me see the big picture. Everything that’s happened. It’s just…sometimes it’s hard. Having lost Sara. Sometimes I just fall into this…bad place and get angry. And that shouldn’t be your fault, El. It shouldn’t be. I’m working on it. It’ll be better, I promise.”

“It’s okay, Hop,” El said, separating from him. “I understand.”

“It’s not okay, though,” Hopper insisted, holding her hand firmly. “You’re a good kid and that’s why you don’t see it that way, but, please, let me make things better.” El nodded, and he smiled. “I heard you wanted to share YOUR settlement with Joyce. That’s very good of you, El. She says she won’t let you.”

“I know. It’s annoying,” El moaned, looking away. Then she hopefully gasped and turned to him. “Oh, but maybe YOU can convince her to…”

“Listen, kid,” Hop continued. “Joyce is a pretty stubborn person. It’s hard to sway her when she’s made up her mind. BUT I did tell her that you happen to be pretty stubborn too and that you grew up without anyone respecting your wishes, so it would be good of her to respect this one.”

“Hop!” El said, gasping. “You made her feel GUILTY?”

“It worked,” Hop said, smiling. “I know, I know, I said I’d be better…but this one was for you, so I think I should get a free pass, right?” El smiled and, again, wrapped him in a huge hug, leaning into him. 

“I’m so glad you’re back. I love you, Hop.” He leaned his goateed face into her fuzzy hair, still short from being shaved, and pressed a kiss to her head.

“I love you too.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
“It’s off center, Max.”

“No it ISN’T Lucas! You have no artistic eye whatsoever. What would you know?” Dustin and Mike rolled their eyes at the usual bickering of Lucas and Max, as they hung a “Welcome Back” sign, decked in holiday décor, in Mike’s basement for Will and El. Having the entire party together was a rarity these days, especially in happy circumstances, and the group agreed to make their first gathering as a group special and fun. 

“I really don’t think either El or Will will leave if the banner is off center,” Dustin argued. 

“Oh, so you’re saying it IS off center? Of course you’d take his side,” Max huffed. “I worked HARD on this.”

“No it isn’t!” shouted Holly, who Mike had been allowing to spend more time with the party since she had taken a particular liking to Max and Lucas. “Max, it looks super pretty!”

“It looks good, guys,” Mike replied, brushing them all off. His nerves were shot and he hoped that this banner and everyone’s company would make El smile. She needed to smile so badly. 

“What time are they supposed to be here anyway?” Lucas asked.

“Five minutes ago,” Dustin replied. Mike felt his heart beat quickly. What WOULD make them so late? He hoped Hop was okay. Hopper and Joyce were going to have dinner with his parents while the rest of them ordered a pizza and spent time together at the house. Maybe Hop wasn’t up to going out?

Just then, they heard a doorbell ring and the sounds of Mike’s parents opening the door and greeting everyone. 

“They’re here! Okay, guys, positions!” Max shouted, and everyone hid and turned the lights off. Mike strained his ears to hear the sound of Joyce’s voice and Hop – yes, Hop’s voice – talking happily. Hop sounded okay! A month of therapy and treatment surely did him well! But, best of all, Mike heard his mom very loudly and obviously (Thanks, Mom) say, “Oh, they’re DOWNSTAIRS. Go ahead down.”

The door opened, and, knowing that the absolute love of his life was waiting for him at the top of the steps filled his heart with butterflies, even if he just saw her a couple of weeks before.

“Guys?” Will asked. “Um…guys?” Mike was about to go to the light switch, but El beat him to it (which was no surprise; she told him she continued with simple uses of her powers to keep them activated in case she ever needed them; enough not to strain her).

“SURPRISE!” they all shouted, and, to Mike’s relief, Will and El were smiling and happy to see their friends run over and hug them. Mike, unable to help his selfishness, ran for El first, wrapping her in his arms, and felt the arms of everyone else around him as the all held on to each other for a minute.

“Look at the banner, El! Look at the banner!” Holly called. “Max made it!”

“Pretty!” El said, giving Holly’s hand a squeeze and going over to give Max a hug.

“A little off center, though,” Will teased. Lucas and Dustin let out a laugh as Max crossed her arms and rolled her eyes.

“They put you up to that, didn’t they, Will?” she teased. Will looked, confused, and they all started catching up, taking seats at the couch. Holly jumped on Max’s lap and El stood alongside Mike, holding herself closely to him and wrapping an arm around him.

“So what’s the deal with Paul, Will, huh?” Lucas asked. “Any updates?”

“Eh…I decided it’s better to be friends,” Will said. They all groaned.

“Seriously dude?” Dustin asked. “After all that?”

“Well, I mean, he can’t even tell his parents what he is yet. I guess I just feel better knowing…it’s not just me. That I’m not crazy. That the option is THERE when he’s ready, you know?”

“Makes sense,” Mike told him. 

“No, that’s crap!” Max insisted, but changed tact after Mike gave her a look and nodded his head to Holly. "I mean...it's...poopie. He should be PROUD to share you with his dad.”

“It’s not that easy,” El interjected, knowing both Will and Paul and feeling a need to stick up for him here.

“Well, as long as you’re happy,” Lucas said. “I mean, you’re cool with it, right?” Will nodded, smiling.

“I feel much better lately. Just knowing…knowing that you guys know. Oh, but never mind me. There’s…other stuff going on.” He and El exchanged a smile and the others looked at each other in confusion. Mike started to feel a little hurt; El never told him about anything else.

“What are you talking about?” Mike asked. El smiled.

“Will and I left our hotel room this morning and saw Hop and Joyce…kissing.” Everyone smiled and some made a little happy, surprised sound while Holly let out a loud “ew”.

“I knew it!” Dustin shouted, standing up and smiling. “I knew it, I knew it!” Mike wasn’t surprised either. Mrs. Byers and Hopper always seemed to be close and he had a feeling they might get to that point. He was only surprised it took so long.

“So what does that mean?” Max asked. “They’re together-together?”

“Well…they played it cool,” Will said, still smiling. “But later Mom said something to the effect of how she wanted to make sure that we were okay and that her relationship with Hop had changed and all of that…so I also told her about me…”

“You didn’t tell me that part!” El exclaimed, looking put out.

“It just happened in the hotel before we left, while you and Hop were watching TV!” Will shouted. “And she was…awesome. She said she kind of knew and that she loved me no matter what. I mean, if I had known it was going to be this easy, I’d have come to all of you guys sooner.”

“What was going to be easy?” Holly asked, finally expressing the confusion that had been all over her face for the last five minutes.

“Nothing. Just don’t grow up, Holly, okay?” Max asked. 

“Okay,” Holly agreed, and they all let out some good-natured laughter before El let out a small “Oh!” and walked up the stairs. Mike turned to Will.

“What’s…going on?”

“To save her the trouble of explaining, El accepted a settlement from the federal government in exchange for her silence,” Will went on. “She demanded that she share it with mom, which Mom felt funny about, but it was what she wanted. 70/30 at Mom’s insistence. She also made sure El kept most of it in the bank but let her take out a small amount to get everyone…”

“Christmas presents!” El’s voice called from the top of the stairs. She came downstairs with a sack full of gifts and the others got up, too.

“Oh, we’re doing presents now?” Max asked. “Come on, guys!” Everyone scattered to get the presents they had gotten for one another, and in the next few minutes, there was a din of loud talking and laughter, of the opening of wrapping paper, of Holly squealing at the amount of My Little Ponies that Mike’s awesome group of friends was nice enough to give her. Everyone was really amazed by El’s gifts, though. This was the first year she had money to really spend and she went all out for her friends. She bought Max the newest Wonder Woman comic and a set of maintenance tools for her skateboard. She bought Dustin a science inventor’s kit that he had been talking about for the last few months. She bought Lucas several cases of New Coke and a set of Vietnam tools that she found in a catalogue. She bought Will a brand new art kit with state of the art materials.

Mike, though, hesitated when she handed her a gift.

“Tomorrow,” he whispered. “I have something special for you, but I want it to be you and me only. Can we exchange tomorrow?” El leaned in to him and gave him a soft kiss, her lips curled into a smile.

“Okay.”  
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Later that evening, after the chaotic din of Christmas gifts, the party members were all sitting peacefully watching It's a Wonderful Life on TV. Suddenly, they were all interrupted by the sound of the door opening and Hopper’s much thinner, leaner, and healthier looking form coming down the steps. Everyone paused.

“Mike,” Hopper said, looking serious. “Can I…have a word.” There was awkward silence and everyone exchanged looked. Mike, feeling a little intimidated since their last conversation, turned to the others, then to El, who looked nervous, and shrugged.

“Okay.” He followed Hopper upstairs, and out the front door, which made him a little nervous since he surely wouldn’t kill him under his parents’ roof. 

Once they were outside, though, Hopper’s eyes looked softer than he’d ever seen them. They looked almost sad and small. He turned to Mike and his voice sounded almost as weak as his face looked.

“I’m…I’ve been in intense therapy for the last few weeks, kid, and I’m making it my business to fix a lot of things. And…I messed up. I was wrong, Mike. About you. You’ve been good to El. You’re the best thing that’s happened to her. And…to be the way I was, it was wrong. I should have talked to you. No threats, no tricks, just talked to you. I was just WORRIED about her. You guys are young and….it was just a lot at the time. But I see how you’re each doing your own thing and doing well in school, and I see how hard she’s working at being her own person and doing her own thing and…well… what she’s got with you is a good thing. You make her happy. I also heard about…everything that happened. The trip you guys took.”

“I-I’m sorry too,” Mike said, afraid that the conversation would now turn and Hopper would kill him for taking his daughter to a hotel room unsupervised. “It was just…I was worried and…”

“Look, as I’m sure Joyce has told you, going off on your own wasn’t cool. But I get it. And…you respected her. I mean…you did, right?”

“Yes, yes, absolutely,” Mike said really quickly. “Always. I….I love her.”

“I know you do. On that end, it must have felt amazing to kick that Tony guy’s ass. It’s a good thing he’s been on his best behavior since that Leslie girl made a false lead accusing him of drugging Paul and he’s now shaking in his boots in terror. But, I mean, it would be wrong to laugh about that, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah. Dead wrong,” Mike joked. The two laughed and he realized this was the lightest discussion they’ve ever had. 

“You’re nicer than I am, though. It’s only these therapy sessions stopping me from killing him right now.”

“Yeah, well, she’s safe from him,” Mike said. “The school’s seen to it that he can’t go near her. Thank God.”

“Yeah. Anyway, kid, just to avoid any feelings of weirdness I wanted to tell you that I’m glad El has you. You guys have my blessing, as long as you keep that door…”

“Open three inches. Not even an option. Neither Joyce or my parents even let us stay in the same room unsupervised. You were actually much cooler than any of them are.”

“I am?” Hopper gave Mike a wide grin. “You’re not just kissing my ass, kid, are you, because I already told you…”

“No, trust me. You…you were fine. The yelling and screaming and locking me in your car, not so much but…”

“Let’s agree to put the past behind us, shall we?” Hopper asked. He extended a hand to Mike and Mike took it.

“Sounds good.”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

The next day, Hopper got into the car with Joyce, who was excited to share a surprise with him. 

“But today was the day that El was going to bring Terry her Christmas poinsettia,” Hop told her. 

“Yes, and she said she’d like Mike to be there with her this time,” Joyce told her. “You said you were cool with Mike?”

“I am,” Hop continued. “But…I mean, I feel like we should be there with her.”

“It’s her mother and it’s her choice,” Joyce assured him. “El was very happy when I sat her down and told her our plans for today.”

“What plans?” Hopper asked. She gave him a quick look.

“Okay, the jeans are a little informal, but you should be okay.”

“What are you talking about?” Hopper asked. “Where are we going?” Joyce gave him a smile and turned back to the road.

“Let’s think. What did I promise you we would be doing? Right before…everything.” He thought for a moment and then his eyes lit up as he looked at her.

“But…it’s Saturday.” She let out a laugh; a loud and a boisterous one that hadn’t escaped from her mouth in ages. 

“That…that’s your issue?”

“You said Friday. Friday at seven.”

“Well, Friday we had dinner plans with the Wheelers, so I hope Saturday for lunch will work just as well since it’s rare to get any time to ourselves and I thought we’d jump on it.” She reached her hand to his and squeezed it. He smiled warmly back at her.

“Enzo’s then, huh? Is this still a date?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Joyce teased. “All the stuff we did back at the hotel this morning…that was just part of my new workout regimen, so I’ll have to nourish myself to make up for the strain.” 

“Yeah, of course,” Hopper teased. “You’ll need to build up your strength for later.” Joyce turned to him, eyebrows raised. 

“Later?”

“Yeah. I mean, come on, I’ve been waiting years for this. You think I’m going to wave the white flag after one go?” The two of them laughed light heartedly as Joyce pulled into Enzo’s parking lot, and she stopped the car and turned to him.

“It’s not what we planned…but, well, none of it is, is it?” Hopper shook his head.

“Nope. And I guess…I guess that’s okay. The surprises are good, aren’t they?” Joyce nodded, squeezing his hand and leaning in to kiss him again.

“Yeah, they are. Come on. Let’s go.”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“It’s beautiful.” El looked down at the grave for her mother and Becky, a plant in one hand, her other hand holding Mike’s tightly. A tear rolled slowly down her cheek as she read the words on her mother’s grave. Beloved mother. Even if they didn’t really get to talk – as real as she felt that vision of her exiting this world was – she was a beloved mother. She gave up everything for El.

“They did a good job,” Mike said, his thumb rubbing the side of her shaking hand softly. “You’ll have to let Mrs. Byers know; she’ll be happy to hear it.”

El released Mike’s hand for a moment and knelt in front of the grave, placing the poinsettia plant in her hand alongside the front. 

“Do you need a minute?” Mike asked. El turned to him and nodded.

“Thank you.” Mike nodded back and stepped a few feet to the side, and El turned to the stone. 

“Merry almost Christmas, Mama,” she said, touching it. “I hope it’s still warm wherever you are. And that you’re happy and pretty like you were when you saw me. Thank you for coming to see me. It feels better knowing that you went to the other place happy and warm. I’m spending Christmas with Mike. He’s…he’s like you said. He’s probably like my dad was. I got some pictures of you and my dad when we stopped at the house and talked to the lawyer. He looks like me. Kind of weird; that someone I’ve never met was my dad and actually looks like me. I’m sorry he died young. I’m sorry I never got to meet him. But I hope you’re taking care of him, and, would you please tell him I love him, even if we never met? He brought me here. He gave me his face that Mike loves. He died doing something brave. I’m proud he’s my dad. Also, the dad I have now – the one who adopted me – can you please watch over him? He’s trying hard and he’s doing well but he’s been through a lot and I think he’s still sad. And his daughter, Sara – can you take care of her too? Tell her her dad loves her and misses her? And…I wish I got to know her too. I bet she’d be a great sister. Well…that’s it, Mama. I love you. I miss you. So much.” El reached her face over and gently kissed the top of the grave, then stood up, wiping her eyes. She walked over to Mike, who wrapped his arms around her and held her.

“Are you okay?” El nodded.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure you’re up to presents today?” Mike asked. “We can do something else if you want. Get ice cream? Or we can just hang out at the house and relax?”

“No. She’d want me to be happy, Mike. That’s what she said. When I saw her in that dream like I told you.”

“Okay. Just…one second,” Mike said. El gazed, confused, as Mike walked over to the grave, took a piece of paper out of his pocket, and placed it in the poinsettia plant. He quickly walked back to her and held her hand.

“What was that?” El asked, as they walked back to Nancy’s car where she and Jonathan were waiting.

“I wrote her a note,” Mike told her. El smiled, her eyes gleaming.

“Really? What for?”

“To thank her. For you.” El paused, stopping Mike with her arm. She turned him to face her, her eyes shining with moved tears.

“You wrote my Mama to thank her for me?”

“Yes,” Mike said, placing his hands on her cheeks. “How could I not? Just look at you.” El wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply and passionately, holding him tightly and close. His hands traveled soothingly up and down her back as he returned the kiss, feeling her tears drifting slowly across his lips. After a moment, she pulled away.

“Thank you,” El told him. “You’re just…you’re so wonderful, Mike. You’re so good.” 

“It’s what you deserve,” Mike told her, as they walked, his hand around her shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “That and more.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I also didn’t anticipate toasting with club soda,” Hopper said as he and Joyce sat at Enzo’s. She smiled at him, holding up her own glass of club soda.

“No alcohol with the medication, and, plus, doctor thinks it’s best for you to stay away from it anyway,” Joyce said. “Club soda is just as good.”

“Sure it is,” Hopper dryly commented, but he laughed back. He was just happy to be there – at Enzo’s with her, even if it wasn’t the way they originally planned it. Joyce held up her glass.

“To new beginnings and putting all of that other nonsense behind us.”

“Cheers,” Hopper said, and they clinked glasses and sipped. As they did, Hopper and Joyce made a disgusted face at the same time.

“Is this…”

“It’s flat as hell,” Joyce said, laughing. He had to laugh too.

“Figures. Our first date is spent toasting over flat club soda.”

“Well, it’s not what you’re given. It’s what you do with it,” Joyce said, raising her hand to get the waiter’s attention. Hopper leaned in.

“Be nice, please.”

“I’m always nice. You’re mixing me up with you,” Joyce retorted, and Hopper was about to reply when the waiter came over.

“Excuse me, I’m so sorry, the club soda is a little flat. Can we have two Cokes instead?” 

“Lemon in mine, please,” Hopper added. The waiter grabbed the drinks.

“So sorry about that; no problem. I’ll be back with your drinks.” He walked away and Hopper leaned in.

“Five bucks he spits in them.”

“Hop!” Joyce gasped, laughing along with him. “He was perfectly nice about it.”

“Eh, he’s still human,” Hopper said, then turned his attention behind Joyce to the opposite side of the restaurant. “Isn’t that…that kid that Mike’s sister used to date? The one with the bat?” Joyce turned around to see Steve sitting across from a dark, pretty girl, the two of them laughing and holding hands.

“That’s Kali!” Joyce whispered, turning back to Hopper.

“Who?”

“El’s sister! El hasn’t heard from her in WEEKS. I’m shocked she’s here!”

“She’s dating that guy?” Hopper asked. 

“Apparently so. Who’d have thought?” Joyce asked, laughing. 

“Will El have kittens when she hears? That’ll be funny to see.”

“Don’t you dare tell El!” Joyce exclaimed. “It’s…it’s none of her business!”

“Oh, come on, Mrs. Byers, you know you appreciate the gossip yourself.”

“I do not,” Joyce asserted. “And quit the sarcasm. I thought you were learning empathy and understanding in all your sessions.”

“I am. But you can be empathetic and still like the occasional bit of gossip here and there, can’t you?” Joyce rolled her eyes, but was still smiling. “Ah, I see that smile, Joyce. You can’t hide it from me.”

“I see yours too,” Joyce said, taking his hands in hers. “And it’s good to see it again. It really is.”

He smiled back and leaned across the table. Joyce hesitated.

“But…that Steve guy is right there…”

“Oh, who cares?” Hop asked, and pressed his lips softly to hers. She returned his kiss, smiling into them, when the waiter interrupted them with their drinks. Across the restaurant, Steve was busy whispering to Kali in hushed tones that El’s guardian and policeman were hooking up, and Kali, usually too serious for anyone, couldn’t help but smile.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Do you like it?” El asked, looking at Mike’s difficult-to-read face as he opened up a box with a VCR, full of VHS tapes she bought him. It was every movie they had seen together on TV, discussed, or had seen at the movies, plus a few more that he mentioned liking and wanted to buy. Inside was also several boxes of popcorn and his favorite candy, M&Ms. 

“I know sometimes you get upset asking your dad to use his VCR, so I thought you should have one for down here, and that maybe we can watch these movies together, you know. I’m sorry if it’s…” Before she could finish her sentence, Mike wrapped her tightly in his arms and gave her a deep kiss. He separated, a huge smile on his face, and held both of her hands.

“This is seriously amazing. You did way too much, El. It’s…it’s too much. Another VCR? Just for me?”

“It’s what you deserve,” El said, smiling. He looked down, his face flushed red.

“It almost makes me a little embarrassed. I hope…I mean, what I got you…”

“I’d love anything you got me,” El assured him, brushing her hand against his face and looking sincerely into his eyes. He sighed and, his hand shaking, squeezed hers.

“Okay…but you have to close your eyes.”

“What?”

“It’s…part of the gift. Just…close your eyes.” El closed her eyes, and in a moment, she heard the sound of Mike starting up his record player. It was a song that she heard on the radio before; a love song. She recognized it from the first few chords, which she placed the moment she felt something large and rectangular in her hands.

_You are so beautiful_  
to me.  
You are so beautiful  
To me  
Can’t you see? 

“Open your eyes,” El heard Mike say, and she looked down to see an enormous scrapbook in front of her, the sound of the song humming in her ears.

There was a black and white picture of the two of them in front; her hair still longer, the night before Thanksgiving, leaning against his shoulder and laughing with him about something. He added fancy lettering to write the words “You are so Beautiful to Me” on the cover.

“Open it,” Mike told her, kneeling in front of her to see her reaction, which was immediate as her eyes started brimming with tears. She opened the book. Each page had a lyric of the song and another picture.

_You are so beautiful to me…_

A picture of the two of them posing on the couch.

_You are so beautiful to me…_

A picture of El staring deeply at something, deep in conversation.

_You’re everything I hope for…_

A picture of El and Mike looking at each other, noses touching, about to kiss.

_You’re everything I need…_

A picture of El and Mike hugging that Jonathan snuck when they came back for Terry’s funeral; one the night before when everyone was trying to spend time together and cheer El up.

_You are so beautiful to me,_

A picture of El alone, looking into the camera, shaved head and smiling. 

Tears fell freely down her face as she kept looking, Mike’s craftsmanship in arranging the words and adding graphics and including just the right pictures moving her to tears. She finally got to the last page, a picture of the two of them in conversation, exchanging heart eyes. She never got to see from an outside perspective how he looked at her. It warmed her heart. How they looked at each other made her feel safe and warm…

_Dear El,_

_I just wanted to give you a reminder every time you forget, every time you doubt, every time you think there’s anything about you that isn’t amazing…you’re beautiful. You are SO beautiful to me. YOU’RE everything I hope for, YOU’RE everything I need. My amazing, smart, inspiring, bad ass, intelligent, sweet, caring, and, yes, BEAUTIFUL El. I love you always._

_\- Mike._

“D-do you like it?” Mike asked, looking cautiously at El and wiping a tear from her face. El nodded, placing her hands on his cheeks.

“I love it more than anything in the world,” she said. Leaning her forehead in to touch his. “Thank you.” The music still playing, Mike reached his hand over to her.

“Will…you dance with me?”

“Really?” El asked, laughter accompanying her tears.

“Well, yeah. Like at the Snow Ball. For old time’s sake.” El nodded, and he brought her to the center of the basement, right about where the fort stood. The fort where he gave her her first home and friend. The fort given to her by the boy who would be the only one she ever loved, who would be her truest love and soulmate for the rest of her life. 

They swayed as the music continued.

_You are so beautiful  
To me…_


	18. Eleven Epilogues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone - this will be my final note and update. I'm so excited to bring this story to a close. I've played with ST fan fiction for the past year or so, and this is the first work that I've completed. It has been a joy to play with these characters. While I'm sure the Duffers will take the show in its own amazing direction, it's always fun to explore new possibilities and play.
> 
> I decided while writing this that I wanted to do a series of eleven mini epilogues. A huge theme, and the motivation behind my story title, was growth. I've always hoped to depict that growth in a person or a relationship isn't always the result of major, tragic events, or even heartbreak, but sometimes just moving forward and finding joy in ordinary things. It's not the HUGE things that make people and couples grow sometimes, but a collection of little moments and the feel of everything in your environment coming together and being right. That said, I thought to myself about eleven SMALL MOMENTS in El and Mike's life - everyday things that didn't involve her powers or a threat imposed upon them - that would show their growth in sweet, subtle, very human ways. I sometimes thought to go for the grand scale - their wedding, the birth of their child, etc.. I love stories featuring those things, but, given my theme, I thought I'd take it a different direction, as life has taught me that those little behind-the-scenes moments are what make the difference between simply running through the motions and having a truly fulfilling life.
> 
> Again, I can't thank those of you who have read and commented enough. Writing is a vulnerable thing; it is taking a little piece of your heart and putting it to words through characters you love. For those of you who realize this, who take the time to commend that piece of the author's heart for managing to touch a piece of your own, I just want to tell you how valuable that is. Keep reading new work and letting authors know you love it!
> 
> So, with that, here is the conclusion of this piece. I hope you all enjoy it!

**One**

**June 20, 1987**

“I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.” 

The crowd of Hawkins residents cheered wildly as Joyce and Hop exchanged their first kiss as man and wife. It was here in Hawkins – overlooking the quarry, which was natural, beautiful, and forever part of Hawkins just like Joyce and Hopper were. Eleven, Will and Jonathan exchanged giddy smiles. They were now officially siblings, and, while they had felt like it for the longest time, having it be official was even more amazing.

Joyce and Hopper led their small bridal party – consisting of Eleven, Joyce’s Maid of Honor, and Will and Jonathan, Hopper’s Best Men – out of the ceremony area and in the direction of the tent several feet away where a reception was ready. They stood at the front to greet everyone, and, in about half an hour, the tent was full of boisterous laughter, discussion, and festivities.

At the reception, the party found each other and settled in, engaged in their usual banter. Mike, his arm wrapped around El, couldn’t stop looking at her. She was a vision in a light pink bridesmaid dress, which was strapless, lacey, and puffed with tool on the bottom. Her hair was teased somewhat and out in wild curls. El was usually a simple and a natural beauty. He loved her that way. But there was something about seeing her dressed up that weakened him.

“What?” El asked, looking at him with a smirk on her face.

“Nothing. You just…you look amazing,” he told her, lightly kissing her bare shoulder and watching her blush.

“It’s not too puffy?” El asked. Mike laughed a bit, his arm around her waist tightening.

“It’s way too puffy. But you make it look good.” 

“Suave thing, telling my sister her dress is too puffy,” Will teased, nudging Mike. Mike turned a dark shade of red, turning to him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were listening to my private discussion with my girlfriend.”

“You’re sitting at a table with everyone. How private did you expect it was going to be?” Will asked, laughing. At that moment, they were all distracted by the sound of loud, brazen music blasting from the speaker.

Max turned to Lucas in disgust.

“You did NOT request this song.”

“You KNOW I did,” Lucas teased, jumping up. “Come on, guys.”

“The chicken dance at a wedding?” Max asked, unable to restrain her laughter. “If I were Joyce, I’d kill you.”

“It doesn’t look like she’s ready to kill anyone,” Dustin replied, his arm draped smoothly around Suzie and nodding his head to the center of the dance floor where Joyce, clad in her simple, lace wedding gown, was laughing with Hopper and flapping her arms like a chicken. The table erupted in laughter, except for El, who gazed in confusion.

“Ch-chicken dance?” She asked. “What are they DOING?” This only made everyone laugh harder, but Mike, seeing El look a little put out, grabbed her hand.

“Come with me. I’ll show you.”

“Not you too,” Max groaned, her face in her hands.

“Oh, don’t be a party pooper, Max!” Dustin said, and the group of them went to the dance floor. Mike faced El, still laughing, and showed her how to wave her hands, flap her wings, wiggle and clap. At first El followed like a child taking instructions in a classroom; she gazed at him seriously. Then, she started smiling too, those dimples of her showing and making Mike even more light-hearted and happy than he already was. 

It was then that Mike realized that this may be the happiest and most free he’d ever seen El. Less than a year ago they had been through Hell and back, and now, just a few months later, she was sitting here, giggling, dancing and moving around like a chicken, her laugh warming his heart and his mind. He could get used to this. He could get used to her laughter…

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

**Two**

**May 20, 1989**

Their laughter echoing in the hallways of the catering hall where they just ran out of El’s senior prom, Mike and El finally stopped themselves as they burst through the doors of the hall and into the garden area outside. Their hands clasped together, doubled over, they couldn’t stop laughing.

“You sure you’re okay?” Mike asked, rubbing her back. El laughed more, nodding her head. 

“Yeah I’m…I just can’t believe I…”

“You disrupted a very serious limbo game,” Mike laughed, running his hands through her crimped, shoulder length hair. “Sliding and falling into the tray of food and having it knocked over right into Tony’s ex girlfriend Lisa….”

“The whipped cream in her hair!” El squealed through laughter. It really was a vision; to see the girl who tormented El covered in cake and whipped cream due to El’s clumsy limbo blunder was something neither one of them was going to forget anytime soon.

“Serves her right, though,” Mike said, moving his hands to her face and looking at her. “God, I just…I can’t get over you.”

“That I’m clumsy?” El asked, still laughing.

“Just…look at you. You’re the prettiest girl at this prom and you’re here with me.” El placed her arms around his neck and looked at him tenderly.

“You’re the most handsome boy.”

“No, I’m really not,” Mike said, leaning his forehead in to touch hers. “The luckiest, maybe, but not the most handsome.”

“Shut up,” El teased. He gave her a look of dramatic shock.

“Did you just tell me to SHUT UP, Eleven?” El nodded, laughing some more, and he removed his hands from her and started walking away. “Fine, then. I’ll just sit here and hang out with the roses.”

“Mike! I was kidding!” Mike sat on a bench overlooking a garden of rose bushes and turned away from El, who was tagging along with him like a puppy.

“Hey, roses. My girlfriend here wants me to shut up.”

“Stop!” El insisted, sitting on his lap and wrapping her arms around him. He turned to her.

“Wow,” he said, smiling widely. “You’re not shy about it, are you. Well, as long as you’re sitting on my lap, what would you like for Christmas, little girl?”

“For you not to be mad at me. And to admit you’re handsome.” Mike leaned in and gave her light pecks on her collarbone, while whispering softly in her ear.

“I could never seriously be mad at you. I love you too much. And, well, if I am, it’ll pass. And…I don’t know about the last part. I’ll admit it when it’s true.”

“What if I show you how handsome you are?” El asked, leaning in and giving him a long, passionate kiss. The two sat, entwined, lost in each other, kissing with more fervor and energy than they ever recalled doing, their hands wandering and clinging on to every part of the other they could reach. As it got really intense, El pushed back.

“Mike…I’m sorry, I…I got carried away…”

“It’s okay, El,” Mike told her. “Trust me, I have no complaints.”

“I know. It’s just…you know, like we talked about. We’re getting so close to being ready to…and I want to. So badly. But, you know, we agreed…school and our future and plans and…”

“What did I tell you?” Mike asked, taking her hands in his and looking at her deeply. “You never have to explain yourself to me. Ever. I totally understand. We will move on to more when you’re ready and only then. And I promise – I swear – I’m more than happy to be here right now. Doing what we’re doing. I love you.” El leaned forward and pressed a long, soft kiss to Mike’s lips, and then smiled at him as she nuzzled her face into his chest.

“I love you too.”  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

**Three**

**November 9, 1990**

It was cold, but warming up next to Mike was a most welcome solution.

Mike promised El a surprise for their belated 7-year anniversary. He said that the 7th anniversary of November 7th was special and that they should do something nice…only it fell on a Wednesday and both El and Mike were swamped with schoolwork. Mike had two papers and a presentation due that very day for his computer science courses and El had an exam in sociology. They each looked forward to that Friday, where they would get together and Mike promised a drive somewhere.

After driving several hours from the Byers-Hopper house in Illinois – where El was staying and commuting at a local two-year college a short drive away from Mike’s school, the University of Chicago – El started to notice a few things that were familiar. Road signs and particular rest stops. She asked if they were returning to Hawkins, and he bit his lip, unable to withhold his smile.

She expected for a moment that maybe they were going back to the Wheeler house itself, which eventually they did, just to use the restroom before Mike said he wanted to take her to a different location. They drove a little further to a spot where there was a clearing in the woods, and Mike stopped the car, leading them, both out.

They walked some distance to a spot in the woods where there sat a large tent. He turned to her and said he asked Max and Lucas to set this up for them since this was the spot they had met ten years earlier. He pulled out a cooler from his car where he had packed food for them to picnic, and then some books for them to read and board games for them to play. El thought it was the sweetest gesture ever, just like Mike himself, and the two munched on sandwiches and chips while they snuggled close together and played Uno and checkers.

For a while.

After losing a second checkers game, El asked if they could just lie down and read a little bit. They lay side by side in their sleeping bags, but, before Mike could open the book he brought and start reading to her, she felt herself overtaken by the light and shadows of the lantern he brought reflecting on his freckly face. That face that had made her melt for seven years. She reached her hand for his.

“Mike.”

“Yeah?” he asked softly. 

“Come in my sleeping bag with me. It’s cold. Besides, you’re too far away,” she said with a smile. He looked at her sleeping bag.

“Is there room for two of us in here?”

“We’ll make it work,” El told him, and she unzipped the side so that she could drape it over him as he came to lie down alongside her. As they were both very slight, they managed to squeeze, and, together in this puffy sleeping bag, they found warmth in the midst of a cold November night. It started to drizzle, and the sound of light raindrops hitting the tent echoed the beating of Mike’s heart as she gazed at him.

“I’ll never forget seeing you in the rain that day,” Mike told her, looking deeply in her eyes and realizing without words that the rain made them both think the same thing. “You were so beautiful. You still are.” El smiled and placed her arms around him, as they lay side by side in the sleeping bag. She reached up to kiss him, which started slow and sweet, but, eventually, the heat of their bodies so closely entwined in the warmth of a snug sleeping bag made something snap, and they felt the kiss become heavier and more intense. This had happened more and more lately. In high school, their kissing was innocent and sweet. It had to be, mostly due to the fact that the only times they could see each other were supervised visits. But since a year at college, they began to mature and so did their level of intimacy. While they had made it to some uncharted territory, they hadn’t made love.

Or, at least, not yet.

Mike insisted El had to be ready. She was different from most girls. She only started learning about the world at 15 and, even then, she started in a very limited place. He knew there were more important things for her to learn about than her more animalistic urges if she wanted to grow into a healthy person; she needed to find herself, her interests, her passions…discover who she was.

But now she was doing that. She was passionate about social work. She was more confident in her abilities. She was a person – a fully humanized person so far away from that poor little girl he met who was a deer in headlights. A girl who needed to grow and learn and be more aware before she could truly decide if she was ready for such a big step.

So, on this night, as they celebrated their 7th year and 2nd day together, after Mike rolled above her, she felt the full force of their clothed bodies welded together, and that magical, warm, feeling of being completely loved overcame her. When El forced herself to separate from the magnetic pull of his kisses and touch, when she looked at him determinedly and told him she was ready at this exact moment, his heart warmed and froze at the same time. He, unable to keep himself from touching her, rubbed his hand on her cheek and pressed a soft kiss to her lips.

“Are you sure?” he asked, leaning his forehead to hers and gazing at her affectionately. She smiled at him, out of breath.

“You found me seven years ago. You never let me go. You’ve waited. I’ve waited. I…don’t want to wait anymore. We’re…not kids. We’re 19. I…I want to give you…me. All of me.” Their hearts beating so fast that you could almost hear them pounding, Mike smiled at her and gently kissed her back. As it had before, that kiss progressed. Slowly, steadily, intensely. And their games, their books, their childhood things pushed to the side, that night Mike and El gave each other all the love they had to give slowly, sweetly, and in a tender way that neither one would ever forget.

______________________________________________________________________________  
**Four**

**May 14, 1991**

“El Hopper”

Ever since El got her name legally changed before starting her associate’s program, she dreamed of this moment – when her name, the name given to her by the boy she loved and the man who took her in – would be announced as one of the graduates of the social work program she just completed.

She stepped on stage, decked out in a brand new purple dress and a blue cap and gown, smiling at the group of people who stood at commencement ready to shake her hands. It seemed just yesterday that Paul was helping her understand how vowels worked and to practice verb tenses, and here she was, with a degree. A degree she could use to do something with herself, and she knew exactly what she was going to do.

She looked up at the blue sky, her eyes on the clouds, imagining her mother was up there. Her mother who was nursed and cared for in isolation by her Aunt Becky. And she was sure that there were tons more out there like her mother who needed help; who needed someone who was caring and loving to help to give them happy moments to remember. That’s what she would do. She would seek to help those in poor living situations, those disabled, elderly, vulnerable – those who needed someone as badly as El did he first few years of her life, just someome to be kind – and help them. Her mom would be her guardian angel and get her there.

But she knew her mom had helpers here on Earth.

After she grabbed her mock diploma (she was sad to learn the real one was mailed out weeks later), she turned her face to the audience where she saw the shameless enthusiasm of her adopted parents, her stepsiblings, and Mike, the love of her life, standing and cheering for her. She looked at Mike, his lanky hands to his mouth where he was raising his voice as loudly as he could to cheer for her, and thought about their study sessions when he’d visit in high school.

“It’s too hard,” El would say, throwing her books down as her eyes brimmed with tears. Mike would hold her hand and ask her to face him, and then he’d rub her hands softly.

“You’ll get it,” he promised her. “It may take a while and it will be work, but you’ll get it.”

And she did.

She finished high school two years ago with awards in merit and growth. Her GPA still wasn’t incredible and she didn’t achieve high honors, but she passed. She made it. And then, as she moved on to college with a solid B average, which, for her, was beyond what she’d ever expect, she realized Mike was right. Perhaps she lacked the foundation to get A’s in every class, but she got it. She started to understand and really enjoy what she was learning. And now she had what she needed to make her own path, which had nothing to do with her powers, her past, her Papa, anything. This was hers. 

A tear fell slowly down her cheek, the blank piece of paper in her hand crinkling from the shaking in her hands. 

She’d never felt so fulfilled in her life.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

**Five**

**October 3, 1993**

“Congratulations, you two!”

“Us? No, we…”

“I’m the female point of view. For advice,” Max told the jeweler in front of them, certainty deep in her voice. “Trust me, we are NOT getting married.”

“You make it sound so gross,” Mike mumbled, his eyes on the cases of rings in front of him.

“Cause, duh, it is,” Max teased, crossing her arms firmly. He rolled his eyes, still gazing at the rings.

“I swear, you are 22 going on 12.”

“Whatever. Let’s get down to it. I had to have some acne ridden teenager manage the arcade today in my absence, so we have to find the perfect one so it’ll be worth it.” Mike sighed, forgetting that Max finished school and was now managing the arcade where the four of them used to hang out. Sometimes, with the party only seeing each other on their routine trips back to Hawkins, it was hard to forget they were grown and had jobs. Mike had been working IT for a successful firm in Chicago, where El was also several years into working as a gerontology aide. They were honorary grown ups at this point and it was time to go on to the next stage of things.

It was logical.

Why were the rings in front of him giving him such anxiety?

“There are so many,” Mike said, looking down.

“Well, what is your girl’s style? Is she into simple? Does she like something a little showier?” the saleslady asked.

“Simple,” Max and Mike answered together. The saleslady smiled.

“It seems like you’re in good hands with your friend,” she said, looking over to a customer who just walked in. “I’m going to tend to that gentlemen there, sir. Whenever you’re ready I’ll be back.”

At that, Mike squatted down to look closer to the rings in the case in front of him. Max squatted next to him, and, suddenly feeling pity on him after watching his face turn almost green in anxiety, she felt herself laugh.

“What exactly are you worried about, Mike? You know you could tie a pipe cleaner around El’s finger and she’d say yes.”

“Because it has to be perfect,” Mike sighed. “She won’t care. I know. But for ME it has to be perfect. Because this girl never got to be a daughter or a kid and…well, she deserves the next step done right, you know?”

“Of course,” Max told him, patting his shoulder, enabling him to turn to her. “Of course she does, but, Mike, she’ll have that no matter what ring you get her because you love her more than most people love…anyone. I told you since you were both 13 – you made me realize love exists.”

“You and Lucas have made it too,” Mike pointed out. Max blushed and looked down.

“Yeah, well…that was…luck, I guess.”

“No. You guys have it, too. And you’ll also get here.”

“Please,” Max said with an exasperated sigh. “Lucas is just starting off in his criminal investigations career and he wants a few years to get established, and, well, I’m having a lot of fun revamping the arcade. We WILL get there. I’m not worried and, well…after ten years where’s he going to go, right?” Mike exchanged a smile with Max and looked back at the rings. Some were shaped like ovals, some round, some even hearts. None looked like HER, not yet. 

Then he spotted it. 

The band was thin. There was a tear drop diamond in the center, and, on either side of the front of the band, very small, delicate diamond sidestones bordering it. It was pretty and a little brighter than the solitaire rings, but it was still simple and classy, like El herself.

“What? Which one?” Max asked.

“That one. With the tear drop.”

“The Marquise?” Max asked. Mike turned to her, a completely puzzled look on his face.

“The what?”

“The shape of the cut.” Mike was still staring at her, and she turned red and looked away. “Sometimes, I pass the jeweler near my house and look just to LOOK, okay?”

“Not there yet, huh?” Mike teased. 

“Shut up,” Max mumbled, and she leaned in to peek at the marquise cut diamond. “Wow. Mike, that is SO El. It’s really beautiful.” 

Mike smiled. This was it, no question. Who knew it would be that easy; that he’d just stumble on what was just right? Then again, that’s how he met her twelve years before, so anything was possible.

“If…Lucas ever asks,” Max started. “I like a round diamond. And colorful sidestones. You know, like emeralds or something. Just putting it out there.” Mike laughed as he stood up to get the attention of the salesleady.

“Noted. I’ll pass it along.”  
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

**Six**

**November 12, 1994**

“Are you sure, Mike?”

“Listen, we had a traditional wedding with Here Comes the Bride and The Bride Cuts the Cake and the white dress and all…let’s have a traditional after, okay?”

El placed an arm around his neck and smiled.

“If you’re sure…”

Mike placed his house key inside the lock in the front door of the new home they just purchased right outside of Chicago. It was furnished and ready, but they decided to wait until they were married to officially move in. Mike and Will were sharing an apartment, but El, too new to her job to afford a place of her own and uncomfortable sharing with someone who didn’t know about her powers (which still worked and, sometimes, they were so second nature she just forgot) decided to stay with Hop and Joyce until she and Mike got married. Both sets of their parents encouraged this, as they thought waiting to marry each other to formally live together would make it special. They didn’t realize that El virtually lived with Mike on the weekends anyway, spending the entire weekend at his place. They were sure a little piece of Will may have been relieved to have them in a new spot so he could have the entire place to himself (and as a successful full time graphic designer and freelance book illustrator he could certainly afford it)

But now this was their place.

Their first night in their home – the night of their wedding. Their beautiful, fun, happy, vibrant, perfect wedding.

And he was ending it in the perfect way. Once the door was opened, he lifted her up in his arms and carried her over the threshold, just like he’d seen in so many of his favorite movies. As soon as they got inside, she looked at him.

“Now what?” she asked. He placed her down.

“Now you can walk. I did my job,” he joked. She giggled and wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly.

“Today was perfect,” she said, and he leaned in and kissed her.

“It really was,” Mike continued. 

“Only…I’m REALLY hungry,” El said, placing a hand on her stomach. Mike nodded.

“Man, me too. All that talking to everyone and greeting people and dancing; I think we both kind of forgot to eat. But we’re in luck. I’ve heard this may happen and I made sure to get plenty of Eggos.” 

“Ohh!” El replied, and he had to laugh at how adorable her continued Eggo fixation was. They went into the kitchen, still clad in his black tuxedo and her white A line wedding gown, and settled down at the table as Mike toasted a few Eggos and placed them in front of them. 

“I can't believe it’s 1 AM and ’m not totally exhausted. I think that’s the most I’ve ever danced in my life and more than I probably ever will,” Mike laughed, taking a bite of his Eggos.

“Me too,” El said. “I did pretty bad.”

“You had fun!” Mike told her. “That was the important thing. Besides, did you SEE Hop’s face when you danced with me to Heaven? Tears. It was great.”

“You’re happy that Hop CRIED?” El asked, laughing at Mike’s sudden dark humor.

“Not that he was sad, that a big guy like Hop is such a…I don’t know, mush? Teddy bear?”

“Hop’s always been,” El replied, thinking of when she danced with him to “Unforgettable” by Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole. Mike laughed.

“Always?”

“Well…okay, maybe not always,” El giggled, taking another bite of her Eggo and thinking of Hop’s gruff temper when she and Mike started dating at 13. The weight of the day hitting her, she felt herself yawning.

“Wow…we’re married a few hours and I’m putting you to sleep already,” Mike joked. El shrugged.

“I am a little tired, but I…I don’t know, today was just so perfect I don’t want it to end. What time is the flight tomorrow?” El asked, licking some syrup off her fingers.

“Not until 2,” Mike replied, having another bite of waffles himself. “Then a week in Hawaii. I’m so excited; I can’t wait for you to see the ocean for real.” El smiled. She remembered seeing it in that Billy vision, but she had never actually been somewhere near an ocean and she and Mike always said that’s where they would go for their honeymoon.

“So we can sleep or…not sleep…a little later tomorrow morning?”

“Mrs. Wheeler,” Mike said, a grin on his face. “You naughty girl, whatever do you mean by NOT sleep?”

“Naughty? We’re married now. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t been not sleeping for the past four years,” El joked. Mike reached over and took her hand, rubbing it lightly with his fingertips.

“El Wheeler,” he said again. “Man, that sounds good. El Wheeler…I would love to not sleep with you. In fact, as much as I think you’re absolutely beautiful in that dress, I must confess I’ve been spending most of the day imagining you out of it.”

“MIKE!” El laughed. Mike stood up and sat alongside her on her seat, placing a hand on her face and exchanging a syrupy, sweet kiss with her.

“C-can we not sleep now?” El asked. Mike took her hand and helped her up as the two ran to their new bedroom.

“Thought you’d never ask.”  
__________________________________________________________________________________________

**Seven**

**February 2, 1996**

Mike and El walked out of the huge law building in Hawkins feeling strange.

Mike kept giving El small glances to see if she was okay. He was already concerned as it was in her present condition. She had just gotten through her first trimester and spent the last three months vomiting at unpredictable intervals. She was just now starting to feel better, but this news probably hit her in a bad way.

They finally made it to the car, Mike holding the door for her and her offering a brisk thank you. He didn’t take it personally; he knew it wasn’t his fault. 

When a representative from the Hawkins Assisted Living facility had called to report that Dr. Brenner had died, they both looked at each other extremely confused. What could this possibly have to do with them? For one thing, Mike knew that El was a soft soul no matter what and the idea of him being dead would hurt her in some way, even if he didn’t earn that pain or mourning from her. Secondly, they had spent ten years not discussing her Papa at all. This was the first time they really talked about it. 

Or didn’t.

“El,” Mike started softly. “Please tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I feel weird,” El replied, looking down in her lap and touching her stomach. 

“Why do you feel weird? He had no family close to him. A wealthy cousin opted to manage his funds to keep him alive, pretty much, but hated him and wanted no part of his inheritance. So it was left to the US Department of Energy. THEY decided to give it as further compensation to all of you guys. Steve and Kali took it.”

“No, it’s…the money is not the problem. I’ll…take it I guess. He…he had nobody, Mike,” she replied, her eyes full of tears, and turning to him sadly. “Papa had nobody. No funeral, nobody mourning him…he…he died ALONE.” Mike’s heart broke seeing El cry over and pity a man who put her through so much agony. Her work in the nursing home for the last several years heightened her natural sense of empathy even more. She felt for people deeply; it was just her way. It wasn’t the first time she had heard of an elderly person dying virtually alone, and, every time that happened, she would come home and cry into Mike’s arms.

Years ago, this sympathy being offered to Brenner would have angered Mike. He would have felt as though she were being foolish. But being with El for the last 13 years and married to her for two, he couldn’t help but expect this. She was a good soul who cared about everyone – whether or not they deserved it.

“Yeah…it’s sad. I’m sorry, El,” Mike said, placing his hand over hers. “I mean, he wasn’t a nice person. He hurt so many people. But…”

“He’s still human,” El cried. “And I…I can’t help but think that maybe he’d have a chance if I didn’t…if Kali and I didn’t…”

“No,” Mike interrupted, leaning in and gently placing his hand to the side of her face to angle it toward him. “No, El, don’t. You HAD to. There was no choice. If you didn’t give him justice, the gate would have never closed. We wouldn’t be safe. We wouldn’t have Peanut here.” He pressed his other hand to her belly and rubbed it gently, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You didn’t do this to him, El. You did what you had to do. You can’t punish yourself for it, okay? Because stress is not only bad for you, it’s bad for her.”

“Her?” El asked, wiping a tear from her face and looking at him. “Do you want a girl?”

“I want a healthy baby,” Mike said, smiling at her. “And a healthy Mommy. I just…I have a feeling it’s a girl. I don’t know why.”

“Me too,” El said, her hand meeting Mike’s over her stomach. She seemed more relaxed. And now with them in a serious discussion anyway, Mike thought it may be a good time to bring up the subject he’d been dodging.

“El,” he said softly. “About the baby…listen, your life is still your choice first, and I don’t want to be that kind of chauvinistic guy who tells you what to do. But…this inheritance, the settlements you still have in the bank, the raise I just got…we CAN, if you wanted to, afford for you to stop working for a few years and take care of the baby. If you want. If you want to keep working, if you really love your job and don’t want to quit, that’s fine too. We’ll figure it out. I’m sure Hop and Joyce would help. But…I was wondering what your plans were.”

El smiled at him, placing a hand to his cheek.

“Mike…I love my job, I do, and I want to go back to it eventually, but…I’m so glad you said that, because I’d really, REALLY love to be a Mommy for a few years. At least when she’s little. Or he.” Mike’s eyes lit up, as he held both her hands, the love El had in her eyes for this baby overwhelming him with emotion.

“You would?”

“Mama and I…we never had a chance to be close. And things are going to be different with her.”

“Her. You can’t help it either, huh?” Mike asked. El wiped another stray tear from her face and smiled.

“No…it’s just a feeling I have.”  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

**Eight**

**July 11, 1996**

El thought her little Theresa Karen was finished eating.

She was no longer suckling at El’s breast and was now leaning against it like a pillow, looking all around. Her eyes – El’s liquid caramel eyes – gazed up at her as she ate and now that she stopped, and El couldn’t get over it. Theresa looked at her as if she immediately wanted to let her know, “Hey, Mommy, I know you. I like you. I need you right now.” The trust and innocence of the perfect peanut of a person that she and Mike created gazing back at her with such purity and smallness made El feel a sense of complete comfort and fulfillment like nothing she ever experienced. 

“Hi Theresa,” El whispered to her. “Are you looking for Daddy? It’s 3 AM, Peanut. He’s been kicked out for the evening. Hospital rules. But you and Mommy can look around. What do you think of this place?” El, holding Theresa in her arms, stood up as she was advised to do by the doctors to ensure that she was getting enough movement in her legs. They also told her to try to sleep, but given her daughter’s hearty appetite and El’s insistence on breast feeding, she had a feeling that she wouldn’t be doing much of that for a while. 

That was okay, though. This little angel was just born and already El would give up anything for her.

The room was full of visitors all day. Karen and Ted, Joyce and Hop, Max and Lucas, Will, Dustin and Suzie, Nancy, Jonathan, and Mike and El’s two-year-old niece Barbara, who El was sure would be Terry’s very best friend in the world in a few years, Holly and her new boyfriend Joe...they had a huge crew. Mike was at El's side as long as he was allowed and was madly in love with their Theresa, very reluctantly putting her down or passing her to anyone who asked. Now it was quiet. The typical sounds of hospital activity buzzing outside were white noise, but, otherwise, El was with her baby by herself, spending time alone for the first time. It was nice to get some mother-daughter time, just the two of them.

“So this is Chicago,” El started, walking herself to the window with Theresa and looking out the window. “It’s a nice city. Well, for the most part. In any city, you may have some people who are good and some who are bad. But Chicago is nice. We’re in a hospital now, though. And when Mommy and Daddy take you home, we’ll be just outside Chicago. We have a nice, quiet house there, with a yard for you to play in and a lot of space for you to relax after a long day. We also have the prettiest room for you, Peanut. It’s teal and white, and with a beautiful white crib and a puffy wall decoration shaped like teal balloons. It’s light and it’s pretty. Like you.” She bent her mouth down to Theresa’s small head, full of thick, dark hair like her Daddy’s, and kissed her softly.

“I’m probably not going to be a perfect Mommy,” El continued. “I make mistakes. A lot. Daddy can be a lot smarter than I am sometimes, but he says that’s not true. He does make mistakes too; we all do. But…well, Mommy is…different. And I’ll explain that more to you when you’re older. But one thing I want you to know is that people can be different, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good. If you can be anything, my Theresa, be nice, okay? Because if your Daddy wasn’t so nice to me when he met me, I may not be here now.” El didn’t know if it was the hormones, but her eyes filled with tears thinking about it. How Mike’s act of kindness changed her life, gave her everything she ever dreamed of, everything she’d ever wanted, including the perfect little baby in her arms right now.

“I wonder what you’ll be like,” El continued. “I wonder if you’ll talk a lot like Daddy; be a leader like he is. I wonder if you might be more shy like Mommy. I wonder if you’ll like Eggos. Oh, well, of course you will! They’re amazing! But…if you don’t, that’s okay. You can like whatever you want and I promise I’ll still love you. Because I just met you and already you’re amazing. Just…come to me, okay? Talk to me and tell me what upsets you. Never be afraid. Promise?”

Theresa let out a high pitched little baby cry, prompting El to laugh even with tears still falling slowly down her face.

“Ohhh…you want to know what that means? A promise…it means something you can’t break. Ever. Your Daddy taught me that.” 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

**Nine**

**November 7, 2003**

“…and Andrew’s needs you to read him Where the Wild Things Are twice before he goes to bed. He’s kind of crazy with that book.”

“El…we know our grandson. We can handle it.” Hopper was running down El’s to-do checklist as Joyce sat with Theresa and polished her nails while Andrew, El and Mike’s youngest at 4, sat in the corner of the room that Hop and Joyce reserved for their grandchildren and filled with toys. El knew they were in good hands. Hop and Joyce had watched them before. Still, overnights were rare as El had things under control and very infrequently liked being away from her babies for the night.

Mike, however, insisted that they have a night to themselves. This Friday marked the twentieth anniversary of when they met. Mike had noticed that El had been very overwhelmed with the first two months of the school year for Theresa and Andrew. She was busy getting lunches ready, helping with homework, arranging play dates, helping kids study for tests, driving Theresa to her afterschool activities like piano or soccer…she barely had a moment to breathe, let alone enjoy herself. She seemed happy – truly happy – but exhausted and frazzled, and he wanted a chance to pamper her the same way she pampered everyone else at home.

“Yeah, El, you know the kids love Pop Pop and Grandma, right, Andrew?” Mike asked. Andrew nodded, turning away from his car and smiling.

“Yeah!”

“I know, I know,” El continued. “I just…Andrew’s very much into routines and…”

“He’ll be FINE,” Hop said, taking a seat alongside Andrew and picking up a car from his toy crate. “Except for when my guy here is going to completely DESTROY Andrew’s guy in a race, right Andrew?”

“No!” Andrew giggled, scrambling to get his car ahead of Hopper’s. El had to laugh. Hop turned to puddy around her kids.

“Seriously, El, we’ve got it under control,” Joyce chimed in. “RELAX. Go out and have FUN.”

“Yeah, Mommy!” Theresa added. “Do you like my nails?” El smiled, never able to resist Theresa’s charms, and took a peek. Joyce was polishing her little nails with a sparkly pink, and Theresa was having fun watching the lights hit the glitter under the gleam of the lamp near them.

“They’re beautiful, Terry,” El said, placing a kiss on Theresa’s head. “Okay, guys, I love you.”

“I love you too,” Mike said, going over to give each of them a kiss. Everyone said their goodbyes and Mike and El went back into their car and headed over to the restaurant where he had made reservations for him and El.

The place was beautiful. Dim lighting, beautiful music, and lovely ambiance graced every inch of it. Due to lack of time, El and Mike didn’t usually go out to dinner like this. El was out of her element, used to having to help one child or another with one task or another every few seconds. To just sit with her husband and enjoy a meal was a luxury she wasn’t used to.

“You miss them,” Mike said, smiling and taking her hand from across the table. El nodded.

“Is that weird? I love being here, Mike, and it’s beautiful, but it’s like…”

“You can’t stop thinking about them,” Mike finished. El nodded. “Don’t worry, me neither. But, hey, look at them. They’re good kids. Well, except the other day, when Andrew got blue nail polish all over the dining room chair.”

“Oh, man, I still can’t believe Theresa let him play with that. I go to the bathroom ONE time…”

“How dare you,” Mike teased, laughing and shaking his head. “I just…I can’t get over how much she looks like you. Just as beautiful.” 

“She’s prettier than I am,” El insisted. Mike smiled, raising her eyebrows.

“Now that’s unfair. Don’t make me compare my two favorite girls. You’re both beautiful.” He gazed softly into her eyes, and, after twenty years, it still made him feel soft and somewhat weak to look directly at her gorgeous face. “Who would have imagined when I met you in the rain so many years ago that we’d be here…that we’d make THEM?”

“I know,” El replied, her hand playing with Mike’s on the table top. “I never would have thought I’d ever be this lucky. I just…I hope I’m being a good enough Mom, though.” Mike’s eyes hardened a bit; where was this coming from?

“What?”

“It’s just…you know, I never had a Mom at their age. I don’t know. You know, what’s normal. And I ask Joyce but she was different about Jonathan and Will also. Sometimes I see these other moms and they…they just seem to have it so TOGETHER and I always feel like I’m running around like crazy and…”

“…and that’s what moms do. They run around like crazy.” Mike leaned in and looked at her deeply and sincerely. “You’re an amazing mom, El. Those kids adore you. They look at you like a superhero, and they don’t even know that you actually kind of ARE one. You don’t need to look like you’re together and perfect all the time to actually BE together.” El smiled, reaching his hand over to her mouth and kissing it.

“Thanks, Mike. Sometimes it just feels good to know I’m…I’m not messing them up.”

“You could never mess anyone up,” Mike told her, kissing her hand back. “You’re amazing, El. You’ve always been amazing.”  
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

**Ten**

**February 17, 2011**

“Mike, will you relax?” El watched with great restraint as she tried desperately to calm Mike, who she never thought would be quite this insane over something this small. Earlier that day, Mike had picked El up from her play practice a little early since he got out of work earlier than usual and didn’t see the point in going home and then coming back. Sure enough, play practice had already disbanded and Theresa was spotted in front of the school, sitting on a bench and “making out with” Richard Fresno, a boy they knew was her friend since kindergarten.

Mike claimed he was calm in person, although, knowing Mike, El was sure this took great restraint. He was very protective when it came to her.

“I can’t relax,” Mike said, still pacing, not aware of his volume as Andrew and Theresa were each in their rooms, probably each on a computer or phone chatting with someone. “I mean…El, you should have seen them. Just…making out, right in the open…”

“Making out like we did when we were a year YOUNGER than she is now?” El asked, giving Mike a taunting smile.

“Th-that’s different.”

“Why? Because it was US?” El asked. 

“Because…well, our circumstances were different. It was a crazy…life or death thing. Makes you much more impulsive. But, she…she’s just a regular almost 15-year-old kid…”

“Yes, and she’s a GOOD almost 15-year-old!” El insisted, standing up and taking Mike’s hand. “She’s doing well in school, she has nice friends, she gets involved…so she kissed one boy.”

“Kissing isn’t just kissing. Not anymore. It leads to…you know, OTHER things…”

“You and I didn’t do those things until we were 19.” Mike paused and gave El a knowing look, breathing in deeply.

“That’s it. We’ll just…make sure she stays 15 forever.”

“Good plan,” El joked, wrapping her arms around him and placing a gentle kiss on his cheek. He placed his arms around her too – still as long, lanky and thin as they were when they met 28 years ago.

“I just worry,” Mike continued. “She’s just…she’s like a little you. And the idea of some boy all over our little you…”

“All over? I thought they were just kissing?”

“They were,” Mike continued. “It’s just…it’s all so fast. I was just giving her piggy back rides and playing tickle monster. When did this happen?”

“Never mind that,” El continued. “ I was just keeping the door open three inches for Hop. When did ALL of this happen?” Mike froze in his tracks, looking down at El terrified. “What?” El asked.

“I just realized something,” Mike said, fear eminent in his voice. El stood back, concerned.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I’ve become Hop.” El laughed hysterically, rubbing his arm and hoping he could find a way to laugh at this himself.

“Frankly, no,” El continued. “I mean, I love Hop, but he was crazy. The screaming and yelling and barking at people at the time. You…you held it together. You didn’t say anything to embarrass yourself in front of Theresa, did you?”

“I was too busy begging myself not to freak out.”

“So you’re good, Mike. You’re good.” She leaned up and gave him a soft kiss, which he gladly returned, until he abruptly separated and gave her an excited idea.

“The three-inch minimum rule can still apply, though, right?”  
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

**Eleven**

**November 16, 2019**

El took a moment to enjoy the silence of the house after having a huge 25th Anniversary Celebration at their favorite restaurant with all of their friends. Their parents made it, Max, Lucas and their kids Xavier and Melanie, Dustin, Suzie and their son Bastian, Will and Paul (who found each other on myspace fifteen years earlier and reconnected immediately), Steve, Kali, and their daughter Lucy, Jonathan, Nancy, Barbara and their son Theodore, Holly, her husband Joe and their twins Madison and Jake, Leslie and her husband Rick, and all of their work friends (El had gone back to work when Andrew turned 11). Theresa sat holding hands with Richard, who, as it turned out, was her own Mike Wheeler, much to the real Mike Wheeler’s dismay. However, Richard was a sweet boy, so it was hard not to like him. Everyone enjoyed dinner, drinks, speeches…it was a beautiful night.

El and Theresa got home and plopped onto the couch, while Mike and Andrew caught themselves up in playing some video game in the other room. (Yes – at 48 and 20, they still loved video games.). Full of wine and food, Theresa contentedly turned to El.

“Mom…how did you know with Dad? That he was it?” El smiled, shrugging. Theresa had asked this question before years ago; she probably didn’t remember. Although it’s possible she thought El’s answer might change. It remained the same, though.

“I honestly always did,” El replied, giving Theresa’s hand a little squeeze. “That may be strange, but…I looked at him and I knew.”

“When you were eleven?” Theresa asked skeptically.

“No, no, I was twelve.”

“Same thing,” Theresa laughed. She looked up dreamily at the ceiling and shrugged. “I think I know with Richard, but sometimes…I don’t know, I wonder if I rushed into it, you know? Like if I should have dated around more. Do you ever feel that way?”

“Never,” El said, smiling. “Although it’s a normal way to feel. Still…it’s a different time now. You have the internet, you have everything telling you to look for better choices. Forget all of that. Are you happy, Terry?” Theresa nodded, leaning into El.

“Yes. Really happy.”

“That’s all you really need,” El told her. “Just like what you’re doing with work – you knew you loved acting so you’re teaching in that theater school and doing it on the side. Find your happiness and follow it. That’s what my mom wanted for me.” Mike walked in, exasperated, and plopped down on the couch.

“Your son just destroyed me,” he groaned, placing an arm around her.

“Surprise, surprise, Dad,” Theresa teased. Mike gave her a look and continued to lean into El.

“I miss you as that sweet little kid in pigtails,” Mike joked. Theresa let out a laugh and then stretched. 

“I’m going to turn in; it’s been a long day. A fun one, but a long one. Goodnight,” She got up and stretched, wished her parents goodnight, and went upstairs to her room.

“I can’t believe we’ve been married twenty-five years,” Mike said, although he’d been saying that pretty much all day. “How did that happen?”

“No idea. But, well…I’d say we’re doing pretty well, don’t you?” Mike took her hand. The same hand he had been taking since they were little kids running from scary things they had no place seeing. She’d gone from a lost little girl to a beautiful, smart woman – a wife, a mom, a friend, a hard worker, an inspiration. She was always an inspiration, but, sometimes, after all these years thinking about how far she'd come, he was just amazed by her.

“We are. I’m still in awe of the fact that you picked me,” Mike joked. “Married twenty-five years and knowing each other thirty six…”

“Thirty-six,” El repeated, nuzzling her face into Mike’s chest. “THAT certainly doesn’t feel true. It was like yesterday. All of it.” 

All of it…

She thought of meeting Mike. Of being terrified, wet and cold. How he had given her a home, a friend, and offered to even give his life, even at his young age.

She thought of how he called her for 353 days when they were separated. The longest they’d ever been separated. How he never gave up on her and she promised herself she wouldn’t give up on him.

She thought of how he protected her when the mind flayer was after her. How he was at her side every moment to help her walk, to hold her arm or her hand when she was in pain and fighting, to make her safe.

She thought of their very first two-day trip together at 15 – how he risked it all to go to her so that she could be protected and get her powers back. How he beat the shit out of Tony and, years later, that and his attack on Billy was the angriest and most aggressive she had ever seen him.

She thought of their regular visits in high school, their make out sessions in Mike’s car, the support he gave her as she struggled with studying and stress and sat through grueling but helpful therapy sessions to make sense of her childhood and how it impacted her.

She thought of how they supported each other through school and rooted each other on as they got jobs. She thought of how he knew she was sad to leave her job, but overjoyed that she’d get a few precious years with her baby (and eventually babies) before going back to work.

She thought of how he proposed to her in a reproduction of their fort, candles glowing everywhere, her eyes filled with tears. She thought of how they had a perfect, beautiful wedding, but how the best part was getting to enjoy marriage immediately after; to come home, laugh, eat Eggos and, as they called it, “not sleep”.

She thought of the look of joy and fear on Mike’s face when she first told him he would be a father. She thought of how she saw the softened and sweet expression in his beautiful brown eyes the first time he held and looked at Theresa, and again with Andrew. Seeing him be the amazing father he always hoped he’d be made her fall in love with him even more.

She thought of their adventures in parenting together, helping the kids with school, making sure they said please and thank you and were kind, making sure they were happy.

They were happy.

Years ago, Paul said that plants needed the right conditions to grow. So many times, their conditions had been off or difficult, and yet they grew. Despite separations, trouble with El’s powers, interdimensional threats, and anything else that made their lives different and difficult, they grew.

And they weren’t finished growing.

“I’ll take another thirty-six. You?” El asked. Mike smiled and kissed her head softly.

“Just thirty-six? That’s nothing.” She placed her head on his shoulder, and, comfortable and relaxed, the two fell into a deep, warm, peaceful sleep, no dream of theirs ever comparing to the dream they got to live every day being together.

Together. And still growing.


End file.
